a couple of little dresses

I love my little niece! She is such a sweet little joy, and she gives me an excuse to try new sewing projects. Recently I made a couple of dresses, one from a man's dress shirt, and one from some scrap fabric. I had no patterns and am not the best at finishing yet, so they are a little rough in places. However, it is so cool to me to be able to take a piece of fabric and an idea in your mind and turn it into something functional! Here they are:

oh man, terrible photo, but the only one I got before I gave it to her...
Loving ruffles these days!

getting organized

It is such a dream to have all this free time in my life right now to craft, sew, clean, cook, and create! Recently, I was inspired to create something that will help me get organized in the kitchen. It seems like every other week when grocery shopping time rolls around that I have to pull out all my recipe books and random recipe cards that I have on file, flip through them and pick out which meals I want to make for the next couple weeks. It kind of ends up taking forever and I end up forgetting a lot of our go to meals simply because I don't have them written down.

Not anymore (hopefully). I decided to sew a piece of fabric with clear pockets on it - 28 pockets which equals 4 weeks worth of pockets. Then I went through all my recipes once and for all and threw out the ones we didn't care too much for, and kept the ones that were our favorites or go to's. Next I typed them all up onto little business size cards with the ingredients on the front and the directions on the back. My wonderful husband laminated them at work for me. Now I have this little recipe pocket with 40 or so recipes on cards that I can fill it with for a months worth of meal planning all rolled into one. It makes it so easy to go grocery shopping as I can just scan the cards for those weeks. During the week it helps to not have to dig out the recipe, and to know ahead of time what will be for dinner on that night. Some of the cards say "leftovers", "new recipe", or "frozen pre-made meal" on them cause let's be realistic - who cooks every single night?

another little nephew!

My sister in law had a sweet little baby on April 9th! Her and my brother now have two little ones - Eden and Lucas, and my sister and her husband have two little ones as well - Joshua and Madelyn. That brings us to a grand total of 4 nieces and nephews so far. They are so sweet and we love being their uncle and aunt!

pillow redesign

I have recently been into sewing pillow cases. I don't have a pattern, but they are so easy (and very forgiving if they are a little off). We got this pillow when we were first married and to be honest, I never really liked the fabric. So finally, two and a half years later, I decided to recover it. The cost is so cheap in comparison to buying a pillow cover- we're talking about .50 cents!

Here is the (boring!) before:

and the after:

easter extravaganza

This easter we were planning on driving down to Eugene to celebrate with my family with a pit stop in Portland along the way to say hello to my in-laws. We were so excited, Jake had even taken a half day off so we could start our trek early.. Friday morning came, we were all packed and ready to go and not only was it snowing, but our car wouldn't shift into any gears. Bummer! After trying to figure out an alternative mode of transportation, or how to fix our car, or if the passes were clear enough to get down to where we needed to go, we were forced to stay in Yakima for easter. Not the worst case scenario considering my brother and sister-in-law and niece live up here, but still sad to miss celebrating with the rest of our families. Good thing the main reason for celebrating is that our Lord has risen from the grave! That was one thing that wasn't going to change!

We ended up going to see baby chicks with our sweet little niece, going to church, and having a lovely meal of honey ham, garlic mashed potatoes, lemon-almond green beans, thyme bread, peach jello salad (a family tradition), and raspberry lemon bars for dessert. Our niece had a fun little egg hunt and opened her easter basket, and we had a lovely time playing games and relaxing with the family we did have in town!

us:
our delicious meal:
eden, so excited to find an egg!
Jake & Eden petting baby chicks: