I am SO pregnant...

and it's killing me. Literally, this baby is sticking so far out from my body, it hurts to walk, and move, and I was so sad when I couldn't dance with my hubby the other day because trying to lift my legs for those tiny steps was so painful. lol. Blah. Mostly it's just this week that's been bad, but I've been really tired too. I have less than 4 weeks left!! CRAZY! I can't believe it! (due on the 27th, but all my babies came at different times, so who knows!) I am ready for him to come, but not. I think I'm ready, almost, to not be pregnant anymore, but I don't know that I'm really ready to have another baby. Ok, I am so ready to hold this little baby, and rock him, and love him. But I'm not so ready to love him AND take care of three other children, and figure out how to balance my super cuddly needy girl who never leaves my side (she is going to be MAD when she realizes that she is going to have to share me with someone else. Unfortunately she's entered a hitting stage with her brothers, so I'm not looking forward to how she treats the baby when she wants me to herself. Fortunately her and Daddy have been having more bonding time, so hopefully she can rely on him a little more during the times when I'm preoccupied.) I'm also not looking forward to getting for little ones ready for church on my own (my hubby has meetings early for church, so he leaves before we even wake up), nor sitting by myself with 4 little ones during church (thank goodness for friends who already help me out). I'm also not excited for grocery shopping and other errands... but ok. enough of that. I am excited. And I think it will be a fun adventure, as it already is. I LOVE my family... I'm just in that last stage of pregnancy where being pregnant doesn't seem so fun anymore. lol. ok, enough ramblings. :)


March was a crazy month. I felt like I didn't finish anything, but I really actually made a TON of stuff! Yeah! I finished some patterns, made myself two shirts and a skirt. I made a dress and a shirt for Mabel, two ties for the boys, finished my travel duffle bag and am partially done with another one for the kiddos. An Easter basket for Mabel. I made two travel bathroom bags for the hubby and I. And whatever else I worked on in between. I've never sewn so many clothes in all my life! Definitely a record for me. I need to take some pictures, and when I get around to that, I'll do another week of finishes and just share them all at once. :) Hopefully I'll get to it before the baby comes. But no promises. :) (if you follow me on Instagram you've seen it all (in bad phone camera format) I'm @fromblankpages.) :)

Anyway, I can't remember what I was originally going to blog about. It turned into a bunch of ramblings. :) I hope all is well with everyone and wish everyone a wonderful weekend!! Oh! I do need to blog soon so share my finishes for the First Quarter FAL link up! The last day is the 7th! Don't miss it. :) 

And, just so I don't have a totally pictureless post, here was the Easter picture I was going to share on Sunday but never got around to blogging it. I hope you all had a beautiful Easter! :)

 The ties and dress I made for them! The ties were actually for St. Patrick's day, but I didn't finish them before church, so they became Easter ties. :)

They are total goof balls!

A Week of Finishes: i LOVE you Pillow!

This pillow was a last minute Valentine's gift for my sweet hubby. We don't really go all out on holidays, especially Valentine's Day. We have done fun things in the past, but it's just not one of those holidays that gets top priority for us. Sometime during the morning hours I told him if he wanted to get me anything, he could get me some chocolate! (which I ended up going out and buying for myself. lol.) Anyway, then I thought, if he's getting me something, I need to get him something. I tried thinking of something awesome prior to the day, but for some reason that doesn't work. I'm such a in-the-moment-idea-person that it is near impossible for me to plan anything in advance. Drives me crazy!


Anyway, then I saw this picture on instagram from Littlebitfunky. (Did you click on the link? You have to look at it. ... I'm still waiting!) :) Ok, I saw that and fell IN LOVE with those hearts! SO cute! I knew right away I wanted to make them into a pillow. So of course I dropped everything, pulled some fabrics, and started cutting! It really didn't take long at all to put together! We fit in naps and quiet time, and in between all the mom moments, I almost got it finished... but the embroidery took WAY longer than I had expected. In the end, I am really happy with it and feel like I am actually getting better at it. It wasn't done when the hubby got home, so I hid it under a blanket and stitched away in secrecy while we watched some Downton Abby. I still didn't finish it.

I think I broke 3 or 4 needles on this thing. Originally I only sewed two or three hearts together before sewing the bigger one to the next layer (so I wouldn't have to sew through so many layers) but I didn't like how puffy it was. I wanted everything to be sewn down, and so when I went to sew down the very middle ones, I broke needle after needle. Oops! It was worth it!

The next morning I whipped it all together, wrapped it up, got everyone dressed, buckled all the kids in the car and we drove off to Dad's work! (We usually don't visit him at work. Except to drop off the kids when I have a dr's apt that I can't take them all too. We did actually go the day before Valentine's Day and brought him some sugar cookies that we all decorated for him. It was a  lot of fun!)

pre-decorated sugar cookies :)

He wasn't supposed to have any meetings at the time we showed up, but I guess one got rescheduled. We stayed for a minute and gave him his surprise pillow! He had no idea what I was working on, and I think he thought I was just going to make it into a wall hanging. He LOVES pillows! And he was so happy to get this one! He said he showed everyone he worked with. lol. So funny.

Front

Back - orange is his favorite color, I think.

Anyway, now that it's home, he uses it a lot, and I love it! I've made him things in the past that he never uses, so I kind of went on strike for a while and wouldn't make him anything. lol. I'm glad I finally found what he likes. :) (As a kid his mom wanted him to do something, I can't remember what, and said that if he did it he could have anything he wanted. A bike, a toy, anything. All he wanted was a new pillow. lol. Since we've been married he has also bought a few new pillows. I think it's cute!) :) He is also very pretective about it. Sometimes I hear him tell the boys, "That's my pillow! Be nice to it!" or "Bring my pillow back in here! What are you doing with it?" lol. So funny, but makes me so happy. :)

I definitely do love this guy!!

So there is my finish for the day! I hope you'll keep linking up your finishes! I am really enjoying reading about them! You all make some AMAZING items! :)

Oh, and be sure to add a link in your post back to here if you link up (even if it's an older post) so that people can come join in the fun! :) Thanks!

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Heart Art :: an oversized cross stitch pattern for Valentines Day! :)

Happy almost Valentines Day! :) I have been working on something fun lately, and I am so excited to share it with you! Though it definitely does not have to be a valentines-day-only item. I think I'm going to hang mine up all year long...

I have had so much fun making these! They are super quick! (I finished the blue one this afternoon, in between meals, stories, taking care of kids, etc.) The other two take a little longer, 2 nights max. They would be cute if you embroidered a word or saying in the middle/around them too. But I'm too chicken and don't want to mess them up. I would like to put LOVE in the middle of the pink one, maybe after I get a little more practice. ;)

Cross stitch is great though, it's so simple, and I've figured out a good way that is fairly fool proof. I haven't cross stitched since middle school, maybe elementary school, but it's definitely fun! :)

Supplies:

You of course can use whatever brand, supplies you like best, but this is what I used and am really happy with. :)
* 6" embroidery hoop
* fabric: something large enough to fit in a 6" hoop. Cotton works best, I made the pink ones with linen, but linen is a little bit harder to work with.
* Stick and Wash interfacing by Pellon. LOVE it! You don't have to iron it, and I guess it washes off if you want. It's a good stabilizer while stitching.
* Paper and Printer - to print off the pattern
* Scissors to cut out the pattern, and some for cutting your floss
* Embroidery floss. I used the variegated floss I won at Sewing Summit. Brand: Cosmo. I really like it, and I really like the effect the variegated colors give it.
* Glue stick or lapel stick
* Embroidery needle. I don't know what size mine is, but it's blunt and thick - which is especially good for the prep work.


The rest of the instructions I have written on the pattern sheet that you can download from Craftsy here. There are no pictures however, so if you are a picture person, be sure to keep reading. (I will also include a few extra tips below.) :)

Prepping:

Cut out your fabric.

Stick your stick and wash to the back of your fabric, in the center.

Place fabric in the center of your hoop.

Cut out the pattern piece, leaving a boarder around the edges. (I forgot to leave a boarder on the top.)

Generously apply your glue stick to the back of the pattern, especially in the corners, and cover the entire paper. Apply to the center of your hoop.

** You want to make sure your paper doesn't shift at all while prepping the pattern. If it shifts, your lines will be crooked and it won't turn out nice. Especially since you have the stick and wash between the paper and your fabric, I say the more glue the better (ok, but not too much. Just enough).

Decide if you are going to cross stitch the outside of the heart, or the inside. For this tutorial I did the inside, and will be poking all of my holes on the inside or white part of the heart. If you are going to do the outside, then you will poke your holes in the yellow part (the pattern is actually pink, but we ran out of ink and apparently still have some yellow left in there). :) 

**If you are doing the outside, this is where it is especially helpful to leave a boarder around the pattern when cutting it out.

Using JUST your needle, start poking holes in each corner of the squares you wish to cross stitch.

** A thicker needle will ensure that you will be able to see your holes later while you are cross stitching.

Poke through all layers, coming out the front.

Progress photo, for filling in the center. You could actually do all of it, making the center a different color than the outside. That would be cute too. :)

Progress photo of the front. Here is where cotton is a lot easier to use. The holes show up WAY better in cotton than in linen. In either case, the stabilizer is nice to have on the back, because the holes also show up well on it. I look equally at the back of my pattern as I do at the front while stitching.

All my holes are now punched - from the back

All the holes punched - from the front

Cross Stitch:

You can do anywhere from 2 strands to 6 strands. If you use all 6 strands, you will need a little bit more than one skein of floss (you can see how much I'm short in the photo below). If you do 2 or 3, you will have enough in one skein.

Using 6 strands. I love the look of the thickness of it, but I need to order more floss.

Starting in one corner, carefully peal the pattern back and start cross stitching in one direction. 

** With the linen, I found it necessary to keep my pattern attached to the back as I often needed to re-punch my holes. The cotton however, did not need that and I easily finished the heart without re-punching any holes.

Cross stitch the entire pattern in one direction.
I almost forgot to take a picture and already started going the other direction.

To mix up the colors a little more with the thread, I sometimes go around in different directions so the different colors overlap more. Just make sure you don't miss any "x"'s and that you don't trap yourself in later.

Keep going until it's finished!
Make sure to tie off all your ends.

I think I am going to turn this one into a pouch or something.
These would also be cute as a mini pillow, a pin cushion. or part of a mini quilt or quilt. If you are going to add it to a different project, be sure to plan accordingly and cut your fabric the right size, and center it in the hoop where you will want it to end up.

If you are going to keep it in the hoop, trim the edges of the fabric, and glue to the inside of the hoop. I really like these simple directions here for finishing your hoop: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42706337@N07/6134773975/

Finished Hoops:

I'm going to keep this one on my wall. LOVE it!

Close up

You can download the pattern HERE.


If you make one, I'd LOVE to see it! (seriously! I am thrilled every time I see someone make something inspired by one of my patterns or tutorials!) You can share it in my flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/fromblankpages/ or shoot me an email!

Happy Stitching!! :)

from blank pages... Linky and a Thanks kind of day!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I hope you have had a wonderful month and have a beautiful day. :) I love this time of year with all these great holidays, and they always seem to come and go too fast. Too much to do, but I love it all! Today I am grateful for the general store in town that carried just enough cans of cream of mushroom soup for the green bean casserole. Lol. We are going to spend the day with friends and I am SO excited! But that doesn't change that I'm a slacker and forgot to pick up my needed ingredients when I was at the store Tuesday. So I am grateful that my small town isn't TOO small. ;) Of course I am grateful for so many things! Especially my family! I have been spending so much time with them lately, and it has been such a blessing to all of us. I love my kiddos so much! I am also grateful for my wonderful hubby! He is continually an answer to my prayers and I love him. We've had some fun and exciting changes take place in the last week, and I am excited for this new chapter in our life. :) I am grateful for the gospel and the knowledge it gives me! Especially that we have an eternal family!! A few days ago we were in a different town and I lost Jacks. I could not find him anywhere!! It scared me so bad! I finally found him running down the storm gutter next to a busy street (on the other side of the building where we were). It definitely made me reflect on how much I love all my children, and how much they mean to me. But no matter what happens in this life, I'm grateful to know we will always be together. Families are definitely the BEST. THING. EVER!!! I am also grateful for friends, food, our home, and all that good stuff in life. :)

I am also grateful that I bought some knitting needles years ago that I have never used until now! :) My sometimes-tendency to buy things I "want to some day use" definitely has paid off with moving here. :) I started working on a honey cowl! I am so excited! I have wanted to make one for a while, and finally, thanks to Angela, got the motivation to. I cheered when I found that I had a circular needle the right size in my box of yarn. :)

So this is my new beginning. :) Despite my huge pile of quilts that either just need to be basted, or get a back finished and then basted. I'm crossing my fingers for a basting party this weekend! :) Anyway, this is the 2nd knitting project I've ever done, and it is fun! I made a lot of mistakes in the first few rows, but I think I've finally got it down, and I don't think it's anything too noticeable. :) I am really slow at it. I hope I get faster so I can finish it!! and boy does it make my joints get sore. I'll have to see if I can start knitting not so close to my face. ;) heehee. Gotta see what I'm doing. :) I think if I end up liking it, and get faster at it, I want to make one of these for my kiddos too. I'm thinking they'll stay on better than scarves. Which is always good with kiddos. :)


Anyway... what are you working on? Anything fun or new?

And what are you grateful for??? :)

I want to say thank you to everyone who left a comment last week! I haven't had time to sit down and respond to them all, but I want to say thank you!! I really appreciate your feedback! It definitely made me think about things differently, and in a better light I think. All the comments helped. Thanks! :)

Oh, and I did decide to start getting sponsors for The One Stop Giveaway Shop! I am also going to be offering a free sponsor spot every month! So if you are interested in sponsoring, or just getting a free spot to share your blog or shop button, please stop by and enter! :)

<center> <a href="http://fromblankpages.blogspot.com/search/label/from%20blank%20pages%20party" target="_blank"><img alt="from blank pages... linky party" src="http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo253/dbByDesign/from-blank-pages-linky-button21.jpg" width="175" /></a></center>

Make sure to link to a post, and not just your blog. And please link back here so others can join in the fun!! If you've got a minute, stop by others projects too and leave a comment! :)

Trick or Treat - Halloween Paper Piecing Blog Hop

Soma was so nice to invite me to join her Halloween blog hop! Thanks Soma! If you are visiting my blog for the first time, Welcome!! :) I hope you'll stop and stay a while. If you are new to the blog hop, check our Soma's blog, Whims and Fancies, to see the daily blocks and where all the other blog hoppers are! There are also some giveaways going on, so you don't want to miss those. :)

I think Halloween is such a fun holiday. Well, besides haunted houses, scary movies, and all that evil stuff (those things I could do without), but decorating can be so fun and of course candy is always nice. ;) And I really do love dressing up! I had such a hard time coming up with what block to make, but I'll blog about that later. Right now I want to share with you my block and pattern!

Trick or Treat

I decided to go with a word pattern, which is proving to take longer than expected to piece. Yep, this is just my digital mock up. I'm using Riley Blakes "Trick and Treat" fabric bundle, which seems fitting. ;) So the patterns are different than what is in this photo, but the colors will be the same.
(I hate excuses, but the truth of the matter is that my husband was out of town all week, my sense of "this will take x amount of hours" is TOTALLY skewed!. I'll get my real block up later today so I hope you'll come back and check it out!)

You know how when you piece a block, even if you are using a solid fabric, the seam lines still show up a little? I think if you did all the letters in white, it kind of looks mummy-ish.

Or on a white background (I didn't leave the mock up lines in this one, and it's actually just a little bit different, if you can see where the letters are smoothed out. This is the font I started out with. I think it's called Green Fuz or something.)

So now for the sharing! I have a full pattern that contains 12 different letter pieces, instructions for combining the letters, and a small color block you can use to help plan out your colors. It does not include instructions for paper piecing. If you need some, there are tutorials all over blog land, including my 3 part tutorial which you can find here.

You can find the pattern for FREE in my Craftsy store! 

(oh, and print it at 100% or no scale)


***UPDATE: I added an extra seam allowance around the edge of my pattern without realizing it! I will fix the pattern once I get a chance. For now, the block will measure 11" square, 10.5" Finished. KEEP THE SCALE at 100% or NONE! All you need to do is trim 1/4" off each side once your block is complete. 
I'M SO SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION! 
I promise if you do this it will turn out exactly the same as when I fix the pattern!

If you make this block I'd LOVE to see it! Share it on Craftsy and link it to my pattern, or add it to my flickr group. AND OF COURSE add it to the Blog Hop Flickr Group so you can win prizes!!!

Happy Easter!

Hunter is anxiously awaiting the Easter Bunny, and we are trying to help him learn the true meaning of Easter. (but we'll have chocolate too.) :)

I hope you all have a beautiful and wonderful Easter! 

Still time to plan your Valentine's Day Date!

A few years ago the hubby and I went all out for our Valentines Day! (I've just been reading over it and remembering how much fun we had together before our lives became overpacked with little kiddos. ;) lol. We still have fun... but if you have lots of little kiddos, I'm sure you know what I mean. It's just different) :D


Anyway, I thought I would share the layout and games with you in case you still need some ideas!

I think I will actually just copy and paste it to keep it interesting. It makes me laugh! ;)

"...For our great day, Neil provided Valentines (Dinner) Around the World! He had put together a playlist of music from all around the world. He would always ask me, "Where's this one from?" and I would respond, "I don't know. I hate this game." He always makes me guess what the song is or who the artist is, and I am the absolute WORST at that! He made some SUPER Delicious T-bone steaks! (USA) Yummy!!! (I really want to eat some more right now, they were so good.) Along with some yummy yams (the Caribbean - they really are from there too. Neil looked it up.), salad, Italian dressing (Italy) ginger ale (England - originally), and Perrier (France) - which we ended up mixing with Cranberry juice (based on Apfel Schorle - a German drink where they mix carbonated mineral water with apple juice. It makes the mineral water MUCH more bareable!) It turned out pretty good. The whole dinner was delicious!

"We then proceded to my portion of the evening: The Entertainment. :) We have a game called Bananagrams, which is also called Speed Scrabble - super fun game. But I made up before hand some variations on scoring. I picked out some valentine's words, and if you made any of them you got extra points; for every "L", "O", "V", "E" that you used, you got an extra 5 points; after counting your points/letters, if you could rearrange your letters to make certain words (had to have all the letters needed) you got extra points. It was fun, and I think it took as long to count our points as it did to play the game. :) It was fun. The winner also got a "Love Buck", basically a coupon for something (cookie, soda, dessert, massage, favor, item of choice). I really won, but Neil fudged the numbers so he won. We both got Love Bucks.

"Then we went onto our other game. I had previously put together a playlist, on Playlist.com, of valentine's songs, and then picked a phrase from each song, and made up 6 different "Valentine's Music Bingo" cards. They each contained a heart as the free space as well. Then I put the playlist on shuffle, and if we had that song or phrase from the song on our board then we could cover it up. When someone got a Bingo, they cleared that board and traded with another one (we played with two boards at a time), recieved a Love Buck, and continued onto the next portion of the game. When I was at Sam's I saw those big containers of different flavored Jelly Beans and just had to get one - which leads us to the next portion of the game: the Bingo winner would then recieve a jelly bean chosen by the other player, whithout seeing what it looked like, and then have to guess what flavor it was. For example: Neil got a bingo, I would pick out a jelly bean and compair it to the pictures so I would know what flavor it was. Without Neil seeing I would put it in his mouth and he would have to guess what flavor it was. If he got it right, we would continue on with bingo, repeating the whole game. Now if we DIDN'T guess the flavor right, ****HERE IS WHERE ALL INNOCENT MINDS SHOULD SKIP OVER READING THEPURPLE TEXT AND CONTINUE WITH THE BLACK TEXT*** , if we didn't guess it, we would have to remove one article of clothing. :) I made sure to have lots of layers on. ;) It is SO hard to guess flavors!!!!!!!!!! You should all try to just guess it at least! And then we would continue as usual. It was a fun game, with a fun twist - Neil thought it was a good idea too, so I thought I would share, in case anyone else wants to play in the future. :)"



If you want, here is the playlist that I made for the Bingo game: http://pl.st/p/15098345227

I turned the Bingo cards into PDF's. Just click on the link under each card. I included the "Love Bucks" too if you want. :) Remember, I made them a couple of years ago, so they aren't top notch design. lol.

Valentine Bingo1

Valentine Bingo2

Valentine Bingo3

Valentine Bingo4

Valentine Bingo5

Valentine Bingo6

Love Bucks1

Love Bucks 2

Hope you all have a Happy Day tomorrow!! :)