welcome to bedrock

Hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween. We sure did.

Barney, Betty, and Bamm-Bamm Rubble

my cavemen

so, this is candy...

yeah, chocolate!

digging for treats with regan

So, in typical fashion, I sewed the costumes on Friday and Saturday morning. Nothing like a deadline to get the blood pumping. Fortunately all the costumes were fairly lightweight. It was 84 degrees on Saturday. Ugh. The boy was still a bit warm, but not too bad.

Bamm-Bamm was a simple skirt cut to the approximate size of a pair of good fitting shorts and a sash that was draped to fit. The costume may have taken an hour start to finish, perhaps even less time. Both pieces were faux fur. The tiger print was soft on the back, so wasn’t lined. The sash was a bit scratchy so I lined it with leftover fabric from Barney’s costume. We found a squeaky club at a Hokus Pokus costume store and picked up a dog bone at Wal-Mart to complete the look.

Barney was cut following a modification of the tunic from McCalls 5683. The fabric was stach stretch faux suede. I cut a single front piece and single back piece and clipped all the edges.   Here’s the full review.

Betty was cut as a simplified McCall’s 5654 using some stash blue mystery fabric. I omitted the pockets and simplified the straps. I love the box pleats, but the dress is a tent. If your a tall, very, very thin girl (which I am admittedly not), it may be wearable as a real dress. On me however, yikes! The funniest part of my costume is invisible. I had to sew an old bra together in the middle to draw the straps in at the front. Unbelievably unattractive and fairly uncomfortable, but it kept the girls in check. Hoo-rah. Here’s the full review.

 

memories

Watching the Phillies’ game last night reminded me of our last trip home (in August) and the wiffle ball spectacular, spectacular in the yard. How did I forget to post these until now? The mind wobbles, doesn’t it? (the line is about 13 minutes into the episode…).

colm explaining the rules to uncle b.

is this legal?

too close to call

play at second

what form

 

sneak peek

look, ma, new teeth!

 

mama’s new baby

Singer Curvy 8780

Mummy got a new sewing machine for her birthday. It is amazing. I love it. It’s the Singer Curvy 8780 and it has 225 stitches (including a block alphabet) and the Costco set came with every foot you can imagine. Seriously, I’m giddy with presser feet. The only one that didn’t come in the box is the circular stitch foot that I must have, if only for the sake of a complete set and my own greed. Currently, Curvy lives on our dining room table, though she’ll be relocated to the craft room after Halloween. Here’s my review of the machine on patternreview.com.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I made a quilt for Regan’s birthday. Like Liam’s Circles and Stripes, it’s another pattern free, wonky quilt that measures about 30″ x 40″. The quilt front is composed of four wonky log cabin blocks made from two adorable fat quarter packs I found at Wal-Mart and the back is half fat quarters with two strips of stash fabric. I used the built in serpentine stitch in rows spaced 1.5-inches apart (sort of, my straight lines aren’t really straight). The fabric is 100% cotton (pre-washed) and it’s sandwiched with low-loft cotton batting. I didn’t pre-wash the batting, only the fabric, so once the finished quilt was washed it got extra crinkly. I hand embroidered “Regan” in split stitch in the lower right corner using pearl cotton.

   

There were some scraps left over from Regan’s quilt so I put together a single wonky log cabin block to make a mini-quilt for Penny, Regan’s lovey. This marks my first attempt at free-motion quilting. Not great, but not as terrible as I feared either.

   

The photos could definitely be better, but with so many “helpers” you do what you can.

i’ll help you mommy

no, let me.

is this better?

 

fall-ish

what's wrong with dirt?

So, it cooled down here for a minute. It’s back in the 80s again, but the trees tired of holding their leaves anyway. The boy loves playing outside. He is, as you can see, a big fan of dirt. He has a funky new crawl that he uses outside. He uses his left knee and right foot (so his right knee never touches the ground). It’s pretty funny.

Inside he crawls on his hands and knees, belly off the ground much more often these days. Liam can also stand unsupported for like 30 seconds, longer if he’s engrossed in something.

One of the big guy’s top teeth finally broke through. The other should cut any day now, perhaps even today. His mood greatly improved once that tooth popped through.

here. this is for you.

So, we’re officially done with bottles. I haven’t pumped in over a week. His grandparents have one last bag of frozen milk that he’ll get on Tuesday and after that it’s straight from the tap or nothing. Usually, he nurses upon waking and before bed, and sometimes before nap(s) and that’s it. However, he actually refused to nurse during the day all weekend, which is a little sad. I’ll keep offering during the day for another week or so, then give up the ghost on daytime sessions. He’ll be 11 months next week and eats so well that I’m not concerned about nutrition, but still… Those first weeks of breastfeeding I never (NEVER) would have believed that I’d be sad to see the end of nursing. Guess we’ll see how long he wants to do the wake up and bedtime feeds.

stylin' and profilin'

In other weekend news, Liam attended his very first birthday party for our neighbor Regan.  How cute is he in that shirt (thanks Laurie and A. Joni)? Liam adores Regan and whenever possible tackles her for kisses. It’s quite cute. Maybe not from her perspective, but what can you do? We  made her a quilt, which I’ll post about tomorrow.

That’s all for now. Have a good one.

 

not all ladybugs are ladies…

This is Frank.

Frank the pincushion

flower pincushion bracelet

He’s the followup to Cealinn’s flower pincushion bracelet and my entry in the Sew, Mama, Sew! scrap buster contest. Frank is a quick and fun sewing project that can easily be entirely hand sewn. There are a few little seams that you can zip up on a machine, but it’s a super tiny project. Enjoy!

Here’s the pdf.

Here it is on pattern review.

 

you be the judge

Supergenius or not-so-much…

So, the boy figured out that the circle shapes fit in the lower-right opening of the box. We verified that the location was key by rotating the box. The shape of the opening was irrelevant, Liam continued to try to force the circles into the lower-right opening.  He’s borrowing daddy’s technique. If it doesn’t fit the first time, hit it harder. Removing the shapes turned our boy wonder into a monkey caught in a banana trap. Pretty funny to watch.

Check out our little hippy’s hair. It’s getting long. I don’t think I’ll be able to have it cut. It’s just so soft. And he’s so cute when it’s messy.

Sunday wasn't all bad

ring, ring

Still no top teeth, but they are right there and causing our guy some serious discomfort. See the little bulges?

almost teeth

 

any given sunday

The Lions’ game was broadcast on our local station yesterday. Here’s what it looked like at our house.

get used to it, kid.

maybe next week...

 

circles and stripes

I made Liam a totally freehand baby quilt. Just tore strips of fabric and sewed them together and trimmed it to a rectangle. Not an even rectangle, but close enough. The quilt uses low loft cotton batting with quilting along the seams and some “primitive” hand quilting/embroidery with pearl cotton. The circles are machine appliquéd and the label is hand embroidered using 6 strands of floss and attached by hand with a blanket stitch. Nothing is even, the circle machine stitching is wobbly, and the entire quilt is wider at one end, but the boy likes playing with it and the cats take turns sleeping on it. Call it a win.

         

 

more, more, more

snort, snort

One of my favorite new expressions. I have no idea what it means, but it cracks me up.

The big news this week is more, as in “Give me more food.” Liam started using the sign last week. His version is like a very slow clap. Oh, Liam started clapping too (obviously). He is very serious when he uses his new sign and, so far, only uses it for food. It’s so exciting. We’re trying to use signs more consistently now that we know he gets it. We’re focusing on meal time signs as our Piglet is very advanced in food related activities. We try to use eat, drink, milk, water, more, and all done whenever we say the words. For the past few months we’ve been doing more, milk, and all done, and now we’re trying to really use eat, drink, and water too. We just learned hungry yesterday, so will probably try to use that too. B insists that Liam does milk when he sees his bottle. I know he recognizes the sign/word, but can’t be sure the little fist squeeze is intentional.

Our main exposure to baby signs is the Baby Einstein “My First Signs” dvd (thanks Aunt Joni and Laurie!) and the Signing Time series that we’ve been borrowing from our local library. We’re so lucky that our library carries Signing Time volumes 1-13 and Baby Signing Time volume 1. Liam seems to like the dvds, though I don’t think he’s learning directly from them. B and I, however, are learning lots and trying to use the signs as much as we can in real life. The hope is that Liam will be able to communicate, even though he can’t talk yet, and thus reduce frustration and resulting tantrums. We’ll see.

The kid has a serious temper and is already quite opinionated. Gets that from B, I suppose.

too cute for words

Liam’s top teeth still haven’t broken through, but they are oh so close. Hopefully they’ll make their appearance this week. I think they’re are causing him some discomfort, especially in the afternoon when he’s starting to get tired. He rubs his face and ears and usually refuses to nap. Fortunately, bedtime is still fine. We’ve pushed bedtime back to 7 PM and are trying to keep him in bed until 6 AM in preparation for the time change at the end of the month. He still gets up at 5:30 AM about half the time, but hopefully we’ll get a later wake up as he gets used to 7 PM bedtime.

Also, is it possible to die of cute? Because, the union suit may just do me in. PJs in generall kill me. What is it about them? Too much.