Casserole Carrier

A while back I pinned this adorable casserole carrier on Pinterest. Like an outrageous number of things I pin, I had no current plans to make it. I just wanted to store that idea away for a rainy day. Naturally, when I needed to figure out a gift I could make for my sister-in-law's birthday, I turned to Pinterest and re-discovered this lovely. Candice loves to cook and bake, and is even in the midst of culinary classes now, so I knew this gift would be a hit. Operation casserole carrier commenced.

Our Super Secret Fun Project Reveal!

It is finished! Our super secret fun project that I mentioned in this post by giving you a little visual clue...

...is complete. Fin. The end.

Wanna know what it is?

Well, that pile 'o staples started out as part of this thing of beauty:

Gah. The color. The stains. Bad.

Porc and Beans (porcupine pincushion)

Believe it or not, as long as I have been sewing I've never had a pincushion. I just put my pins back into the tiny plastic box they came in. It's silly, really. I see the tomato looking ones at the fabric store, but they seem so hum drum to me, and I just couldn't bring myself to buy one (despite the fact that they are super cheap). I found this pattern on Prudent Baby and filed it away for later (aka- pinned it to a board on Pinterest. Don't know what I'm talking about? read this post.)

Saturday night we rented a movie (wish it was a romcom, it wasn't) and I whipped this little guy up while we watched.

I think he's pretty cute!

T Shirt Scarf

This project is for all of you wish-you-were-craftier readers. Yep, you. This scarf is so easy-peasy, you'll wonder why you never thought of it before.

Charly has been a little clingy lately- hence all these pictures have her in them. You all won't complain, right?

My friend Brinn and I made these last Friday afternoon, with a 'frustrated with her lack of mobility and currently clingy' four month old, and a very mobile two year old in the apartment, so if we can pull it off in an hour you better bet you can whip this project out lickety-split.

An evening project

This weekend we are having family pictures taken by the ever fabulous Brinn Willis. It's our Mother's day gift to Matt's mom (don't worry, she already knows), since they haven't had pictures done in a long time, and the family has grown. We are working off of a coordinating color scheme, so I'm trying to figure out mine and Charly's outfits. I haven't made much progress on mine (I know, I'm running out of time!) but I whipped out the ole' sewing machine to make a little something for Charly last night (after our chill out day). What I ended up with is these little cuties:

A little bit of everything

I'm taking it easy today, so this post is going to be a mish-mash of loose ends. Indulge me.

My sick baby today.

Are you pinterested?

Let me share with you a little secret. Its called pinterest. It is my new addiction. It is probably apparent to most of you that I love perusing the interweb. I read lots of blogs (and thanks to google reader I get them all delivered to me) and make things from said blogs. I get most of my projects/ideas from the internet. That being said, I thought pinterest would just be another online time suck that I would become addicted to. I didn't realize the value and ease that pinterest would bring to the table.

Fabric Journal Cover

Let me just start by saying that I love journals. I love a nice thick paper, one that takes pen like a dream. Most of all though, I love the potential of a journal. Just the idea of this empty book ready to be filled with whatever is kind of magical to me.

a few of my beautiful journals

Tote Bag

I saw this blog post a few weeks ago and knew I had to make one of these tote bags. I actually made two since I needed a gift for my sister Erin's birthday and I wanted one for myself. It was a pretty easy project and very versatile. I used corduroy because it was on sale and I wanted a more durable fabric, but you could use just about anything! The original tutorial for the bag is found here.

Sewing up a storm

I've been doing a whole lot of this lately...

...in preparation for our trip to Utah (got here yesterday!) and our sweet baby girl's blessing. I decided to make a blessing gown for her because I'm picky and very particular and also because I thought it would be sweet to have as a keepsake. I had a hard time finding a pattern I liked. Most of the blessing/christening gown patterns seemed frumpy. The pattern I finally landed on was a normal dress pattern that I tweaked to work for my purposes. If you are interesting in making a similar dress, the pattern is McCalls M6015. I took in the bodice (an infant small was too big for my 3 month old!) lengthened it and combined the sleeves from one variation with the bodice from another. The result is this:

Just call me Dorothy...

I spied these shoes a while back and have been aching for them.

image found here

I mean, look at them. They are shimmertastic. And I love, love herringbone. But alas, with a new baby, a single income family and a move to a much pricier cost of living, I just can't satisfy that lust right now. I'd love to put my money where my mouth is and not only have these stylish shoes but support Toms, which is a great cause, but that will have to wait.

Sidenote: today is their One Day Without Shoes day! I'll be participating, but then again I probably won't leave the house today...

Anyhow, my lust continued on as I informed Matt how much I needed them, how they would make me feel like such a hip mom, etc. etc., until I spied this post on a blog I frequent.

She made these sparkly sandals

with some mod podge, glitter and varnish.

I used to re-create my shoes/clothes/anything like this all the time, so this was right up my alley. Another sidenote: I once had a pair of shoes that I would paint with nail polish to match my outfit the next day. I think I was in middle school at the time? Yeah. Let's say middle school:)

I made up my mind that I wanted to do this, and I found these bad boys at Target the next day!

Do you see where this is going? I picked up my supplies from Michaels and got to work glitterfying my shoes! I was able to work on them while Charly napped, and it really didn't take me too long. Pretty soon we were left with this:

They looked great with my new skinnies

I was pretty pleased with the outcome. Sure, they were no gilded Herringbone Toms, but they were fun and funky and just the wardrobe pick-me-up I needed. Sad story: I wore them Saturday when we went to the Cherry Blossom Festival (read about that adventure here) and since the soles were made of natural fibers they got completely water logged and nasty during that rain storm, so my new glittertastic shoes are no more:( Lesson learned: Wear appropriate footwear.

And now, for those of you who frequent my blog to see pictures of the most adorable child in the world (I'm talking to you, mom!) here she is rocking her skinny jeans:

Yep, she's pretty adorable, if I do say so myself, (which I do, several times every hour of every day)

Anybody had any crafty endeavors lately? Were they successful?

Gallivanting

The Coats Clan had a fun filled weekend to say the least…

Friday (Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday…. Don’t know this reference? Watch this video, it’s a pop sensation) my college roommate Katie Dalton became our first official house guest in our new place. She came down from Philly and stayed the night. I hadn’t seen her since she left for her mission for our church a year and a half ago. It was so great to see her! She’s one of those friends that you can pick right up with, like no time has passed at all. What a treat!

Love this girl.

Saturday we bid Katie adieu and headed in to DC to meet up with our friends Gene and Rebecca to go to the Cherry Blossom Festival. I worked with Rebecca in Lexington before they moved to DC, and now that we live just an hour or so away we are excited to get to hang out with them.

Charly and I waiting for the metro

The blossoms were gorgeous and Charly was an absolute trooper on her first outing to DC. Seriously, she slept nearly the entire time we were out as I had her snuggled up next to me in the sleepy wrap. Lets hope she does that well with air travel when we fly to Utah this month!

Me, Charly and Rebecca

While admiring the blossoms we were met with a little surprise rain-storm-turned-hail on our way to the Jefferson Memorial and got SOAKED! Rebecca let me borrow her small umbrella so Charly and I stayed dry (aside from my feet and new shoes… sad story I’ll post about later) but Matt was not so lucky. Here he is with Gene, soaked completely through. In addition to the rain and hail, there was some fierce wind, so the poor wet boys were chilled to the bone.

Matt and Gene, Soaked at the Jefferson

We rode the metro over to East Market and checked out the vendors there, where we happened upon Curbside Cupcakes. Of course we had to indulge. I had an oatmeal raisin one and Matt had red velvet. I’d totally buy them again. We also happened upon a mini donut stand, and I have to say, the donuts stole the show. We only bought one small bag (since we had all just eaten cupcakes) but we could have easily each eaten our own bag. Oh man. They were good.

There is a baby under that blanket...

From Gene and Rebecca’s we made the 2 hour trek to Richmond to watch General Conference with Matt’s fam. We have a tradition of having a craft girls night while the fellas are at the priesthood session, so Saturday evening we made these adorable fabric necklaces I found on this blog.

My new necklace

We stayed there through Sunday and enjoyed a few sessions of conference. Love, love conference weekend! The talks were fantastic. I can’t wait to finish listening to the Saturday sessions (since we were in DC and didn’t watch them)

All in all, a fantastic weekend!

Monsterblog.

Greetings! Long time no post, I know. Matt always 'encourages' me to blog... but by the time I come home from work I just don't feel like it. Today flew by at work and was particularly busy, but for whatever reason, here I am! Lucky you:)

You all get a peek into our lives as Matt posts his cooking ventures. Being the food people that we are, I feel like that is a pretty good look at what goes on in the Coats house, but we are overdue for some life/baby updates- so here they are!

Some time ago our little baby ticker (over there, to the right.... up.... there it is) said we had 100 days left till this little one is scheduled to join us (and yes, I know there is nothing scheduled about it) so we decided to celebrate! We went to a great little diner about 40 minutes away in Staunton called Wrights where Matt enjoyed 'the monster burger'. You are all right in assuming it was huge. After that we had the wheelie, a donut topped with soft serve. I can't believe I never thought of that before, but it was good.

The Wheelie

We also carved pumpkins in the recent past for family night. Our pumpkin is currently rotting on our front porch- the rain hasn't been good for it- so we'll stick with a picture we took right after carving.

Owl Pumpkin

Fall is my favorite season, especially in Virginia. We took advantage of the beautiful place we live and went for a fall drive this past Sunday. Here is a pic of my handsome hubby in a random field we stopped in.

This is Virginia, folks.

In addition to all these goings on, we are continually doing baby-related things, like planning out the nursery, crib searching, making baby things, baby showers (thanks to my awesome co-workers- what a great surprise!), reading all sortsa stuff... Matt even found an ipod app on making your own baby food. He's adorable.

Our crib search was getting frustrating. We found one crib we liked. Loved.

This bad boy is modern, eco-chic and downright beautiful (I'm in love with everything on their website). And costs $690. Aside from the price tag, it was everything we imagined we wanted in a crib. But apparently money is a factor here (ok, reeeeeeally a factor) and we knew this crib could not be ours. Sigh. As I searched for online crib skirt tutorials I stumbled across this post from a blog I used to check out every so often and read about their crib search. It sounded like ours... and I knew there must be resolution, so I started to get hopeful.

What we found through their crib search was this modern beauty. Where is it sold you ask? Walmart. Yes. You read that right. Of all places. Our search had taken us just about everywhere EXCEPT Walmart, mostly because their selection of in-store baby stuff is terrible and I thought it would be the last place to get a unique but simple crib. I was right. It was the last place- but isn't it a beauty!?

This one rings in just under $300. Matt wanted to buy it the moment we saw it, but we are trying not to be impulsive shoppers. Site-to-store service means we don't have to pay for shipping and we can actually get it right here in our rural little community. The stars have aligned, and there is much rejoicing.

Amongst all this crib searching and baby planning, my dear husband ran across a website that allows you to create a virtual room and arrange furniture. He thought it would save him the hassle of moving furniture around multiple times before I figured out what I wanted.... what he didn't know was that it actually was kind of a pain to use. But, once we figured it out, we started to have fun. We created 3d images of the nursery layout that is to scale with the furniture we already have and that which we hope to acquire.

Kinda neat right? We couldn't change the crib to white... but use your imagination. We also couldn't change the wall color to Olympic's 'Crocodile Tears', but you get the idea.

I finally bought my fabrics for the bumpers, crib skirt, changing pad and throw pillows for the love seat, plus whatever else I come up with. Fun patterns, right?

Just yesterday I made this skirt and embellished onesie. Originally I was going to attach the skirt to the onesie to make a dress, but I figured this way both pieces are versatile. I also attached the flower with a snap, so if I decide to make more skirts in the future I can make matching embellishments and just swap out the onesie. It was super easy- maybe I'll create a tutorial...
And for a photo update- here I am at 27ish weeks in that fabulous field we drove to. That belly is a-growin!

merry bobbins

What a weekend! I've been working for some time now to sew enough purses and fabric flowers to be ready to sell at Lexington's community festival, which was yesterday. Friday after work I worked non-stop crafting and making tags, etc. for the festival. I'm super happy (now) with the work I put in. We worked for a few days on coming up with a name for my stuff, but eventually landed on the one Matt came up with- merry bobbins. It's cute and clever. The festival was from 9am till 3pm- and things actually sold! My friend Nicole Olsen and I shared a booth. It was a delight to set my stuff up next to her adorable handiwork! I really admire her taste and her mad sewing skills. Here are a few pictures of the setup and products:

My purses on a coatrack for display (I had 8 purses total)

a teal/denim 10 pleat purse

a basket of fabric flower hair accessories

closeup of the tags I made

my table display- a mannequin was later added but I didn't get a picture :(

Nicole's table display- adorable!

View of the booth. Notice my fabric banner up top :)

And last but not least- my 19 week picture! That belly is a growin'!

Last Weekend...

Lets just say things got a little crafty.

Candice came from Richmond so we could get our craft on, and we had a great time sewing together! We learned how to make rolled fabric flowers and I'm now HOOKED!

I made a purse...

And some flower pins...

Loved it. The purse pattern came from this blog, and the flower inspiration came from this fantastic blog of craftiness.

We also attended my staff party this past weekend, complete with a BBQ and Karaoke. My pictures didn't turn out great from that night, because it was dark, we were in a barn, and I hate *hate* on camera flash... but I feel like this picture captures the passion that was PH Karaoke...

This was Matt and FW singing Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You." It was moving.

In other news, the little bun is growing. Online sources are telling me its about the size of a sweetpea this week.

And... We're back!

Alrighty folks- as you can see this blog just got a pretty new facelift and some much needed subject matter. Yep, you guessed it, this will inevitably turn into the chronicles of pregnancy, birth and child rearing.

Not so very long ago, Matt and I had a conversation about how our blog was, lets say, less than exciting. We decided we needed to vamp it up- he was going to start posting about his mad cooking skills and the amazing meals we have, and I was going to start posting about my return to all things crafty. Lets hope for everyone's sake that we get a few posts in about something besides our little bun in the oven, just to spice it up.

Here's to a whole new caliber of blog!