Our ward Christmas activity & an easy angel dress

Our ward Christmas activity was last night. Early in the month and on a weeknight is a bit different, but we had a great turn out. Most of the families have kids who have to be there anyway, so it worked out well.

We had a 'Night in Bethlehem' theme- everyone brought a can or two of food to pay the 'tax'. Everyone was supposed to wear period clothing- so there were a lot of bathrobes and draped fabric. The kids were supposed to come dressed as angels. Mr. M and my brother (the biggest guys in the ward) were Roman centurions.

I made an angel dress for LMS for our ward Christmas activity- it was pretty quick and easy. I got a $4 twin flat sheet from wally world and folded it in half. Folded with the long sides together, the long sides formed the bottom hems on the front and back. It only ended up being a tiny bit too long- but the belt solved that problem. I laid LMS on top of the folded in half sheet and cut out the shape I wanted on one side. After she got up, I folded it in half again and cut the other side out so both sides matched (see below). Once it was cut out, I just sewed up both side seams and sleeves, hemmed the sleeves, and used some white binding I had left over from another project to bind the neckline.

I then used some felt and some gold fabric (both left over from her Sleeping Beauty crown) to make a belt. I sewed on some velcro I had leftover from another project so the belt can be easily taken on and off.Total cost: about $1.50

I only used about a third of the sheet, and will use the rest of it for a doctor jacket and a chef hat for her to dress up in.

At one point, LMS told me she needed wings.

"Angels don't have wings"

"Yes, they do. Angels need wings to fly."

"No they don't, angels fly without wings."

She showed me the angel from her Fisher Price Little People Nativity.

"See- she has wings."

How to answer that?

"Yes, but when you become an angel, you won't need wings to fly."

She wasn't convinced.

Luckily, she forgot about it and didn't bring it up again. Though she did try to convince me that angels don't wear shoes. Not sure wear she got that idea. Since it was quite cold outside, I managed to convince her to keep them on.

A bad picture of the kids up front during a song that everyone sang. It was dark in the room, so the quality isn't good, and everyone has evil eyes. LMS is standing next to one of her friends from nursery.

At the very end, Santa came to visit. LMS was quite excited. She's really getting into the whole Christmas thing this year- Santa, the lights, etc. I'm going to have her help me wrap the presents so we can talk about giving presents.

Homemade Baby Legs

I love BabyLegs, and have several pair for Little Miss Sunshine. However, they're a bit expensive- $12-$15/pair (plus shipping if you can't find them locally).

About a year ago I tried making some myself- I'd heard of people doing it and figured I could make some myself too. For my first attempt I used a pair of tights and just cut off the top and bottom of each leg, then hemmed each end.

I wasn't thrilled with the end result. The hemmed edges didn't stay in place and they stretched out a bit more than they should have.

I recently found a tutorial here that shows how to make leg warmers from a pair of knee high socks. I bought a 3 pack of knee highs at Target for $6.99. I kept the boring grey ones for myself and made the two purple pairs into leg warmers for LMS.

I laid them out on the table:
Then cut the heels and toes off:
I folded the middle of the foot in half and pinned it to the cut end of each sock:A quick zig zag all the way around, and I was done:There's ribbing on each end, so they actually stay up, and they cost a fraction of the price of BabyLegs. Each pair cost $2.33 plus thread that I already had, and it took all of 15 minutes to make both pair. I'm much happier with how these turned out! As soon as I find more cute socks I'll make some more.

LMS modeling the polka dot pair:

Our pumpkins

I bought pumpkins a week or so ago, just before we all succumbed to nasty head colds (caused by and made worse by lack of sleep from an all-nighter finishing Mr. M's homework, a very cold evening in a barn for our church Halloween activity, and a short hike in the cold, snowy mountains). After buying them, I set them by the front door till we had time to decorate them.


This morning I was finally feeling well enough to tackle the project, so I opened the front door and found this:

After sweeping a bunch of snow off, I uncovered the pumpkins and brought them in to defrost.
See how they're glistening? I had to wait till they warmed up and stopped sweating.

While I waited, I got busy with my scissors and some sticky-back felt, following Lindsay's tutorial for creating Pottery Barn inspired pumpkins. The whole process was easy, the hardest part was sticking the pieces together evenly. The longest part was tracing all the pieces. We used three of the patterns Lindsay has available- there's a spider pattern also. I think they turned out pretty cute. Now I just have to wait for it to stop snowing so I can put them back on the porch (there's no room for them in the house).

Sleeping Beauty crown

I finally finished LMS's Sleeping Beauty crown to go with her dress- just in time for the ward activity tonight!

I ended up making a couple different crowns before figuring out one I liked. I tried craft foam first, but it didn't work out how I wanted.
I then tried a couple different colors of felt, also spray painted, but still didn't like the results. I finally found some gold fabric and went in that direction.
I cut out two crown shapes from felt, covering one side with gold fabric. The less pretty sides got glued together, then sewed together. I hot glued the trim and used Fast Grab tacky glue for the sparklies.
The finished product:
I like that it's soft, flexible, and adjustable. LMS likes that it's a Sleeping Beauty crown.

LMS in her Sleeping Beauty costume

Here's LMS in the Sleeping Beauty dress and crown I made for her. Isn't she cute?

A dress for lambie

This evening I sewed a dress for LMS's lambie. Now she can dress up in a pretty pink dress too.

This morning we got up really early to take Mr. M to the airport. He's flying out to a job fair- hopefully it'll be productive. I didn't get a lot of sleep, so I wasn't as productive as I could have been. I did manage to get the pink dress materials cleaned up (I'm a messy seamstress) and put away. Now I can move on to the next sewing project: recovering a chair for my parents' room.

Yesterday we had a cold front move in and got some snow! It was cold again today, and the reports are that we'll get several inches of snow tonight. Is summer over already?

On my to do list today (and upcycled Kleen Kanteens)

1. Order bedding from Pottery Barn Kids for LMS- not done- it was on sale this weekend, but not anymore- have to wait for the next time it's on sale

2. Run- didn't get moving this morning fast enough

3. Pick up Mr. M from the airport- done :)

4. Mail a pair of shoes I sold on ebay- done

5. Drop off and pick up books at the library- done

6. Find more things for LMS's Sleeping Beauty crown at Hobby Lobby- done

7. Do some grocery shopping- done, involved 3 different stores- ugh

8. Call my VT companion- not done

9. Call the Activities committee chair about the ward activity this Friday- not done

10. Sort papers on desk- done, but will have to be done again in a week, I'm sure

11.Take clothes to storage- done

12. Glue ribbon to water bottle- done

13. Test fabrics and glues for LMS's crown (I'm having trouble getting a result I'm happy with)- done