Bradley Update

In about three months of therapy Bradley has gone from not being able to sit up to sitting, getting from sitting to laying, getting from laying to sitting, scooting, crawling and pulling onto his knees. Now we are working on getting him to take the next steps to pull up to his feet. He will put some weight on his feet now. He is into everything and going everywhere on his own. I blink my eyes and he has disappeared into the other room.

His eating has greatly improved. He did not like baby food at all. As soon as I started giving him table food he started eating more solids. He pretty much eats whatever we eat. When him and I go to litigation lunch he eats the whole time.

In the last two days we have had a sippy cup break through. We went through about five sippy cups. EI brought us a special straw training cup and while he will drink from it he won’t drink much, maybe 3 ounces in a day. Yesterday I started putting his formula in his NUK sippy cup (that matches his bottles, that were the only bottle he would take) and he drank almost all of it. Today I have put two of his bottles in it and he has drinker both of them. It’s crazy how the first cup we tried now months later and many cups later its the cup he is taking.

Sleeping is a progress. Sleeping through the night is one of his goals. Several times he has gotten to the point that he would sleep through the night a night or two then he’d get an ear infection and he wouldn’t sleep through the night again. He likes to go to bed around 6:30 pm and stay on the bed till 6 am but he will get up one or two times for a bottle. Last night he slept 12 hours without getting up so hopefully we are getting closer to sleeping through the night.

His ears have been a continuously concern. He has had four ear infections but three different occurrences. The last time he had one it was in one ear, he took meds and it moved to the other ear, got more meds and it cleared up. We discussed tubes but that was when his doctor realized he needed one more to qualify for them. However due to all the issues he has had and now that he is finally doing so well the doctor is very uncomfortable putting him to sleep. He said something tells him not to put Bradley to sleep so I agreed no tubes. If he has more ear infections that are worse we will revisit that thought but for now he will not be getting them.

We have had many issues with the insurance company when it comes to getting Bradley’s medicine filled. One of his medicines he was suppose to take three times a day but the doctor said he didn’t have to have it that many times and the possible side affects of it scared me so all he ever got it was twice a day. After he started doing so well eating I decided to stop one of the doses of it. It’s the medicine that made him sleep so we had a few rough nights but it was worth it. Then after his doctor’s appointment we completely stopped that medicine. One down and one to go. Once we saw he was doing well without the first medicine that we stopped it was time to start decreasing the other medicine. He only took it once a day so we cut the dose in half and after about a week completely stopped it. He has now been medicine free for three days.

All and all he is doing much better now. We have to go back to the heart doctor this fall and hopefully he will be released from the heart doctor then. We go to the eye doctor next week and hopefully we will get a good report there.

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Baby Doll Hat & Poncho

Every time I make something I always have some fabric left over that is too small to make something big but too big to toss. This time I decided I would make a hat and poncho to match the reversible hat and two scarves I made.

I love Pinterest (now more than reading blogs) and I can always find a project for what I want to make on Pinterest (easier than weeding through a Googe search too). I found this cute pattern here to make the hat and poncho for an 18″ baby doll.

Now to find some other cute baby doll patterns to make!!

Reversible Hat & Two Scarves

I recently found a scarf pattern that I wanted to try out. I had this cute poke a dot fleece that I bought on clearance and I thought this will be perfect for the scarf. You can find the pattern here.

But I wanted to make a hat to go with it. So I started looking and that was when I found the pattern for the hat I made Noah. I used the same pattern to make a hat to match the scarf but I didn’t attach spikes or a tassel because I wanted to make it reversible.

After making it reversible I needed a scarf to match the other side of the hat. Alyssa wasn’t too crazy about the first scarf I made. She prefers a long scarf that she can wrap around several times. I decided I’d make a long tube scarf to match the other side of the hat.

She likes all of them!!!

Dino Hat

I feel like I am always making stuff for the girls but rarely for the boys. I was looking for a hat pattern the other night to make a hat to match a scarf I made for Alyssa when I found this pattern. I loved it and so did Noah so now he has a new hat. You can find the pattern and tutorial here. The pattern is sized for a smaller head (I’m thinking it will fit Bradley) so I had to enlarge the pattern by 30% on the copier for one to fit Noah and my larger pattern will also fit me. 🙂

I had some different fleece in my stash. Noah wanted it the colors to look like Bowser. He is my video game lover!! He plays video games allllll the time. At first he picked green for the hat and tan for the spikes then he changed his mind and said he wants white for the spikes so that was what I did.

Now I have to figure out a way to attach spikes to make it look more like bowser. I have a feeling that will require hand sewing which I hate doing.

Chevron Rainbow Skirt

The other day I was in Hobby Lobby and saw this fabric on clearance. I always check out their clearance stuff in the sewing and scrapbooking departments. I wasn’t sure what I’d use it for but it was $2 and such fun fabric that I had to get it.

After getting home and unrolling it to wash I thought that’s the perfect cut for a simple skirt. So I decided I’d make a skirt out of it. I started to add some ribbon around the bottom but I couldn’t find anything in my stash that I liked to go with it so I changed my mind.

Now to see what my little one thinks of it when she gets home from school. But since she will tell you her favorite color is rainbow and she LOVES skirts I’d say it will be a win!!

Valentine’s Shirt

I saw this idea forever ago on a blog that I follow. I saved the idea but I had not used it yet. I thought about it the other day when I made the dresses from Adam’s shirts but I had already put the dresses together before I thought about it so I couldn’t do it.

With my heart I decided to embroidery the heart with a scalloped edge, then I sewed lines across the heart before cutting the fabric to expose the lighter fabric.

I wasn’t really sure how this would work out so I didn’t stress about the fact that my shirt has sun damage on it before I did the embroidery on it.

Repurposing at its Best!!

I love to repurpose. I repurposed Noah’s old blue jeans into skirts and now Adam’s old t-shirts into dresses. I found the original post on Pinterest and LOVED the dress. It was so cute I knew I wanted to make one for my girls. You can find the original post here.

When Adam got some new under shirts and went to toss his old ones I kept them. I knew I could dye them any color I wanted and make this dress or a few other outfits I had seen made from t-shirts. Adam was so nice and did the dying for me. I already had some red dye so I decided I’d use it and I picked up some pink dye at the store. It wasn’t as pink as I wanted so we added a few drops of red to the pink to make it darker.

I didn’t have a basic dress pattern so I made my own. I laid Alyssa’s dress on a big piece of paper and drew an outline of it for the dress I made for Taylor. Then I added about 1/2 an inch all the way around my pattern to make a pattern for Alyssa’s dress.

For the most part I followed the pattern. I did things a little different with the sleeves and the neck. I had planned on doing some embroidery to the front of it but I put the dress together and I should have done it before I put the front and back together so the embroidery idea will have to wait for something else. The girls love it!!

Ruffled Dress

One down and one to go! This weekend I decided I wanted to kinda follow an idea I found on Pinterest but I wanted to change it. The original post is here.

I loved the idea of adding the ruffles to a shirt but I wanted more of a dress and the shirt I had was not a long shirt. So I used some fabric I had and made the shirt longer. I started out with this red peace sign fabric. But I wanted more than just it. So I started digging through some fabric and found the green star fabric from a blanket I made years ago. I thought they looked really good together. Right before I was about to ruffle the stripes of fabric I laid it out to show to Adam and I thought tulle would make it so much cuter. So back to digging in my stash to find I had lime green and red tulle, perfect! Then I added tulle to each stripe of fabric before I ruffled it.

The original post said to add the stripes from the top down but I did it from the bottom up and now I understand why. It’s hard to sew the last few rows on when I have so much already below it to bunch up over the sewing machine but it worked out.

Now I have one more to finish and both of my girls will have a cute new dress to wear. It’s a little hard for Taylor to get on and off. She will need help getting it on but it’s super cute on. Sorry my picture isn’t with her modeling it. When I realized I needed a picture she had already taken it off and after the whining putting it on and taking it off I didn’t feel like doing it again.

Unfinished Projects

In my last post I said I would post my list of unfinished projects. Now that I have emptied a plastic tub that was full of fabric I now know what sewing projects I have to finish.

1. Ruffled Tunic Dresses
2. T-Shirt Dresses
3. Sequin Skirts
4. Sesame Street Quilt
5. Monogrammed Shirt & Skirt Outfit

Not too bad on my sewing list. Only thing is while it looks like five projects its really eight because one through three are two separate outfits.

I also have some projects related to my cricut to finish. It has not been very high on my list. Don’t get me wrong I love my cricut but I HATE when I have an issue with cutting and the truth is I probably need some new mats so it cuts crappy.

1. Etch Glasses
2. Labels for Jars
3. Labels for Cereal Containers

I also have some scrapbooking to finish. The only thing is, it’s going to take a lot of time and room so I am going to have to finish everything else so I can put up my sewing machines and cricut (well I’ll probably use it for scrapbooking) before I pull out all of that stuff. I bought some stuff and ordered the prints but never scrapbooked our wedding pictures. Hopefully that will be something I’ll have the time and space to work on soon.

Cleaning Out

After Christmas I started cleaning out, decluttering and organizing my house. Since Bradley is starting to get around baby proofing is a must. I have now basically cleaned out and decluttered my whole house. I still need to buy some stuff to help me organize some stuff and I have a list of things to make to help with organizing stuff but its getting there.

With this mind set over the weekend I decided I wanted to start using up some of my scrap fabric. I’ll buy a yard of something, cut out what I need and stuff the rest of it in a drawer to save to make something else with because its too much to just throw away. I ended up making two baby doll blankets and pillows, a pillow to match Bradley’s blanket and I made an Alabama football blanket. That cleaned out ALOT. Fleece is thick fabric and takes up a lot more room than other fabric.

When I changed the sunroom from a playroom to a craft/homework room I had Adam get all my plastic tubs of stuff out from under the house. I have lots of craft stuff. Slowly I have organized a lot of it and got the room set up nicely. But I have tons of yard and fabric. I decided I’d start going through some of my tubs and cleaning them out. I have a good bit of fleece in one of them. The first one I opened had some fleece from a quilt that I started when Alyssa was a baby. Yes I said a baby and now she is 8. It’s really too young for her now being Sesame Street but I have decided I am going to finish it and this has put me on a mission to finish unfinished projects.

I know as crafters we all have lots of unfinished projects but until I got in the tubs I forgot about some of them. I want to challenge everyone to make a list of your unfinished projects and work on finishing them. I know for me it’s going to mean looking in some plastic tubs before I know what all I have to finish but I am going to work on that list and I’ll share it. I’d love to see other people’s unfinished projects too.

Below is a picture of my unfinished project I am currently working on finishing. It’s the quilt I started years ago when Alyssa was a baby. I also have fleece to make one for a boy too but I never cut that fleece so I am thinking I may make something different with it.