Team Spirit Bandana Dress

College Football is officially underway and with today being Team Colors today I thought it was the perfect time to make this adorable little bandana dress.  If you have seen my Hanky Hem Bandana Top then you are off to a great start, because this simple little dress starts off the same way!

 

What you will need for this project

•  2 bandanas (in team colors) - Go Tigers!
• T-shirt
• Grosgrain ribbon - optional

The first thing you will do is cut your bandanas in half on the diagonal so you have 4 triangles as in the picture above.

 

 

Then you need to cut off about 3-5 inches from each end corner depending on the size of your child.  I did 3 inches for my 15-month-old and it still allowed for lots of ruffle.

 

 

Now with right sides facing you will sew the short ends of like bandanas.  Ex. I did my two purple ones together, and my two Clemson print ones together.  Then finish that seam. 

For the next steps I forgot to take a picture so please do not be concerned when you see the bandanas are the wrong color.  I just used these from my bandana top tutorial to substitute.  If you need any clarification on this step you can go here.

 

Open your bandanas up and place one of them inside the other.  Line them up so that they look like the picture above and pin.

Now you will adjust your stitch length to the longest setting and put two rows of basting stitches around the top edge.  DO NOT BACKSTITCH.  There is only one in this photo, but you need two rows.  You will take the long string from the bottom side your work and knot one side so that it sets that work.  Take the long strand on the other end of your work on the bottom and pull, so that it ruffles.  If you have never done this type of gather before you can go here for more information. 

You are going to put your t-shirt inside of your skirt bottom you have been working on. The right side of your bandanas should face the right side of your shirt.  You will adjust the ruffles so that it fits the size of your shirt.  Make sure you align the side seams so that your bandana hem hangs in the right position.  Depending on the length of your t-shirt and how tall your child is you have have to add it up higher on the shirt and cut off some of the length of the shirt.  My shirt was a little long so I cut it off first.  Then when you have everything adjusted accordingly you will stitch your skirt onto your shirt.  Make sure you readjust your stitch length for this step to a shorter stitch length.  Then you need to finish that seam and trim the edges.

Now flip your skirt down and if you wish you can add a ribbon like I did just for some added detail.  Put it on your little girl and CHEER CHEER CHEER!

 

 

Four Eyes

Well, today I am dealing with some ghosts from my past.  Feel priveleged you get to share in this adventure, because it will probably not happen again.  I got out the photo albums yesterday trying to find some pictures of me in glasses throughout the years.  Obviously styles have changed drastically as well as my taste in eyeglasses!  And geez is that a crimped mullet I was sporting when I was 10?!?  Thanks, Mom!

Yep.  I have almost always had glasses.  I got my first pair of prescription glasses when I was in the 3rd grade and I picked out these atrocious glasses that people always thought I was wearing upside down.  I liked them because there was a little picture of a smurf on the side of the frames.  They were pink and blue.  With that said, my own son will probably be in glasses within the next two years the eye doctor said, and I hope I can let go of my own control issues and let him make his own mistakes chose his own style.  It is all a part of growing up and growing into yourself isn't it? 

 

I posted a few months back about how I had gotten new designer glasses.  If you wear glasses you know how expensive they can be.  We have since lost our vision insurance, and with 3 members of my family wearing glasses in the near future it will be increasingly important that we find more affordable options in vision correction.

 

This is one reason I was excited when I was contacted by GlassesUSA.com with a special offer for my readers.  They are offering you 15% off your entire order amount plus free shipping on orders over $50 with code FS15.  Or you can take 10% off your prescription glasses order using code Blog10.

 

They have lots of different designers labels like Coach, Guess, Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani, Tommy Hilfiger, and Jones New York just to name a few.  You can also add any lens customization like polycarbonate lenses, antiscratch coating, bifocal, etc. that might fit your personal needs.  They also sell prescription sunglasses if you are all set for eye glasses. 

 

 

Gone Fishing Party

It seems like this weekend has flown by in a flash.  We packed up on Friday and headed up to the lake where we rented a house for the weekend.  My boys have fallen in love with fishing this summer so I thought it would be neat rather than paying some place an hourly rate and per person fee for hosting the party that I would just rent a lake house and have a little family party where the kids could fish until they dropped.  Mission success.  They are completely worn out now.  Haha.

Dad and the boys checked out the dock Friday night and tested out the fishing and on Saturday afternoon family came up for hot dogs and cake, and of course the fishing fun.  I didn't get nearly the most elegant photos I had envisioned, but it was a whirlwind of a weekend.  I did a cute little banner that went right along with our fishing theme and I strung it on fishing line with Christmas ornament hooks.  This was my favorite banner I have made to date!

I made these Pinterest inspired cupcakes only I substituted coffee stirrers and Swedish fish.  You will find my pinspiration here.



I also put blue food coloring in the Sprite and made what we call the Chocolate Pudding Field of Worms and labeled it as bait.  I unfortunately did not get a picture of them :(    Here is how you make the bait buckets, though.

Chocolate Pudding Field of Worms

Ingredients

• Roughly 30 Oreos, crushed
• gummy worms
• 2 (5 oz) Cook-N-Serve Jell-O chocolate pudding
• 3 cups of milk

Basically I used 3 small plastic sand pails that were on clearance from the summer.  Fill the bottom of each of your buckets with some of the Oreos.  Then prepare your pudding according to package directions.  When the pudding is done pour it on top of the Oreos.  Next, cover with aluminum foil and refrigerated for a couple of hours.  Remove from the refrigerator and put the rest of the Oreos on top.  Then you will take gummy worms and arrange them on the top to look like they are crawling around in the dirt.  Easy peasy.

The party was a hit and the boys both agreed it was one of the best birthdays ever!

Boys' Birthday Invites - Sneak Peak

My boys have birthdays that are one month apart.  Sometimes we decide to combine their parties into one shindig and meet in the middle.  This year is one of those years.  School starts back this week (on my oldest son's birthday as a matter of fact,) and my boys have been hugely fascinated with going fishing this summer, so in order to change it up this year we are renting a lake house somewhat locally and having family up for a little birthday dinner.  The boys have been allowed 2 friends a piece to come fishing with them for the day.

Today I sat down with my Silhouette to finally get the invites finished since the party is next week.  I am seriously not into waiting to the last minute like this, but there were a few issues getting the reservations nailed down, so everyone was given a tentative date for the party and now that it is confirmed the invites will be delivered (some by hand.) 

This is a little sneak peak at what you might expect from their party.  I'll post pics sometime next week of some of the other details. 

I hate wasting paper, especially cardstock, so I mixed up the invites and used the cut outs, and the negatives of the design for the cards.

The back of the envelopes.  Every invite has a different fish (and what is fun is they are all fish that my kids can identify as fish they have caught or have seen someone catch.)

Sunday Social - Kickin' it Old School

I will preface this by saying I do not have any of my better middle/high school pics available to me at the moment, or you would not be getting eyes closed blurry shots haha... but it is what it is.  Enjoy at my expense I suppose :)

1. What were you like in Middle/High School?
I was a shy kid in Middle School especially. I think middle school is always the awkward years where you are still finding your place and I was no different. I had the same group of friends all through school and even to this day, so I'm nothing if not loyal. :) I was a "band geek" although I never really saw us as a typical group of "band geeks" like they portray on television. (We get a bad rap. haha) I was an honors student, and member of the academic team, and me and my husband were runners up for prom king and queen, so how is that for diverse.

2. What were your favorite past times?
Well, I am a musician at heart. I always loved performing, even to this day really. I liked hanging out with my friends of course. I also really liked being with my church youth group. We had so much fun and it was nice to feel like you had support when things weren't going quite like you hoped.

Picture from a youth group trip to the zoo.  Yep, looked like a goob with big hair.  I'm the one with my eyes closed.  Unfortunately my hair was bigger than this sometimes.  :-/



3. What songs were you obsessed with? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. The right stuff. Umm, Middle School days it was definitely New Kids On The Block.... Any of it. I didn't get to go to the concert in sixth grade, so I went with a bunch of my girlfriends to their reunion concert a couple of years ago. We had a blast dressing 80s and screaming like a bunch of swooning teenagers. We laughed so hard.  I think I had a t-shirt with this picture on it.



And here is a very blurry picture of me looking like a goob in my Joey Joe t-shirt.  I must have been in about the 6th grade here.  Very hard years on the ego.  haha 


4. What fashion statement do you look back on and cringe?  Big hairsprayed hair for sure, hammer pants, banana clips, 2 pairs of socks all the time... I really can't hang with some of the neon colors anymore either.
5. What were your favorite TV shows/ Movies?
Teen Witch, Dirty Dancing, Can't Buy Me Love, Adventures in Babysitting, and eventually The Cutting Edge

I also eventually became somewhat of a Treky.  I had a crush on the young Wil Wheaton.

 
Growing Pains... Kirk Cameron


Yeah.... Ok, so I fit the term geek looking at all my answers here haha, and I still would if I were growing up now, only now my answers would read Harry Potter and The Hunger Games with a side of The Avengers, Smallville, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.   Haha.  But I know what I like and that is ok with me.