V and Co: hello kitty cupcakes

my daughter's birthday is this sunday.
when i asked her what she wanted her cupcakes for school to look like she gave me a blank stare.
"i don't know."
come on kid, give me something to work with here.
so i started naming things off and hello kitty got an excited look and "YEAH! YEAH! HELLO KITTY!" ok.
we can make that happen.
one thing is for sure. cooking and baking isn't my forte. i mean i cook, obviously my family is still alive and breathing even after nearly 15 years of my cooking...and baking...well i can do a few things pretty well like my apple pie, but everything else...it's a gamble really on how it's going to look. mainly i can make okay stuff, but the presentation...eh.
so i have a cake making friend/neighbor and i asked her to help me with the cupcakes and cake, and either i am very pushy and overbearing, or she's very nice because she instantly said "sure!"

 the top was made out of fondant. you can make your own using marshmallow. or you can buy it.

my neighbor made her's and it actually tastes quite yummy (i know store bought fondant doesn't always taste awesome)
she had a hello kitty cookie cutter that we used for the base of the head, there was some food color involved for the bow and the nose (she has the  fancy stuff that cake decorators use)
and then last but not least we used edible ink

it started off with the shape of the hello kitty head, then i made noses and bows...
and then we drew the face with the edible ink.
super easy if you have the right tools!

then i made something i felt confident in making: little flags using tooth picks and the washi tape that i got at target :) yay for using it for cute things!

a little friend from her class saw them yesterday and it got the seal of approval from the fellow 5 year old.
and lets just say trying to keep the boys away from the cupcakes for over 12 hours was a feat all in itself.
this morning we still have 24 cupcakes hello kitty cupcakes unscathed. and today i take them to her class for all of her classmates to celebrate katie on her special day of the year.
then i will come home and put up banners and start wrapping presents.
what a happy weekend we're going to have. :)
hope you have a good one too.
we'll talk soon.

V and Co: visits home ec in iowa city

 the other week i was invited to hang out with a few wonderful people. we went to a great shop down in iowa city, iowa. it was a pretty crazy weekend as there was a hawkeye game (and not just any game THE game against the cyclones. heaven help me i don't even follow football and know all the details) anyways that wasn't the only thing going on that weekend, there was also the president coming into town, and some festival...which i can't remember right now but i have a feeling it had to do with corn? don't quote me on that.

 anyways, as part of our get together we got to come in and hang out in codi's shop called home ec. it's really cute and homey and wonderful.

 every corner was filled with thread, yarn, notions, and fabric choices that are jut wonderful.

 she had knits, and echino, melody miller, coated fabrics and japanese fabrics. that's not all she had, she had a lot more...but those are the ones i was drooling over and so i didn't get to take pictures of the other stuff.

 the atmosphere was laid back, and yummy. in the front you had the sewing machines and some fabrics and notions...as you moved back...

 you were surrounded by wonderful yarn (wish i knew how to use it!) and a place to sit relax and work on a project while you ate your yummy pastry from the bakery she has in the store.

 she has classes on how to make this beautiful shirt (that most people have either heard of or have made one or want to make one) the tova which is the talented jenny gordy's very popular pattern. she teaches this class at home ec.
i will be teaching a class there soon. i'll let you know when it comes closer to the time. :)

 here is jenny and greta looking all smug and cheeky. kidding they were a hoot and we had a blast. here     greta is showing jenny her new fabric lines with marcus.

 so if you are in the iowa city area make sure you look up home ec and tell codi V and Co sent you.
:)
on our little trip linzee wanted to show me some of the awesome thrifting that goes on in this cute college town.

 i didn't walk away with too much stuff i was trying to be good. :)

 but i did find this lamp that is going in my eldest noisemaker's room. it looks great in his "map" room.

 speaking of the eldest noisemaker...apparently i'm rubbing off onto him because he came home from scout camp with that bowling pin. when the husband saw him with it he said "what in the? where did you get that and what are you going to do with that?"
noisemaker answers "i found it! isn't it cool? i'm going to use it as decoration in my room."
as the husband hangs and shakes his head in disgust, you pan to my face and i'm beaming with pride. :) first off it was free and it serves the purpose of nothing other than a cool fixture for decoration. job well done son. now you and i both can confuse the your father. :)
 i found a vintage quilt that instantly had to make it come home with me. when linzee asked what i was going to do with it i answered "hide it from my husband." seriously. it has no purpose except looking pretty. kidding the husband saw it and again i get the look of "WHERE IS THAT GOING?"

it's made me pick up my double wedding quilt, and i'm excited to keep going on it because i want it to be a vintage quilt someday as well, hopefully one that will stay in the family. 

have a lovely and productive day. :) i'm hoping for one!!!!

V and Co: what i've been doing with my simply color pre-cuts

 so if you haven't heard simply color pre-cuts are now available at your favorite quilt stores. :)
and well now i feel like i can sort of show you a couple of things i've been working on with my precuts!
this beautiful dresden plate zippered pouch, is my new little sewing bag. i can take my sewing scissors, hexagons or appliqué pieces. also i can carry my thread. or heck i can just carry it around with nothing in it because it's so darn cute. i'm thinking i need to make a smaller one to put inside this one...hmmm maybe tomorrow. :)

 i used a vintage aqua zipper (i found at good will a whole huge bag full of zippers in all different colors! score!) and the inside lining is simply color lime leaf. i'm a little in love with it. and well that's not the last of the zippered pouches i'm going to make. :)

also i've been working on my double wedding ring quilt.
have you ever made one? this is my first one ever.
this one takes a little longer, but i'm excited to keep working on it. i'm hoping that by next march 21, i will have a big enough quilt top for a throw or larger.
why march 21? well that will be my 15th wedding anniversary. WHOOT!
:)
okay back to sewing.
i have quite a few more things to finish here and soon.
we have a review and giveaway of a book next monday, and i want to show you a couple of my thrifting finds, as well as my swell time checking out iowa city's home ec quilt shop. :)
we'll talk soon! promise.

V and Co: how to: make a mini fabric pumpkin

about a week ago I was working on a project (actually, I was not using a seam ripper and using my little scissors to take out a seam) and one of my noisemakers asked me a question in the middle of it. As I looked up somehow the thread holding my pincushion strawberry onto my little scissors got in between the blades and “snip” I looked down right as the strawberry fell and bounced away from me pathetically a few feet away.

“NO! oh man REALLY? Poop. poop.poop...” to which my kid said "mom, stop it with the poop."
yeah yeah, i know.
anyways, for a few days I didn’t have anything on my little scissors, and I kept losing them. and losing them. it got a little annoying. I didn’t realize how important that little strawberry was.

So I sought out to make another one. BUT I was feeling a little on the festive side so I thought why the heck not make a tiny little pumpkin.

okay so here's what we need to make this little scissor charm:
-1 square at 2 1/2" x 2 1/2" (note if you want a bigger pumpkin to be more of a pincushion that hangs off the scissors then i would suggest going up to 3 1/2" by 3 1/2")
-thread. i used simply color orange from aurifil.
-small scrap of green for the leaves.
-DMC floss (green)
-Fray Check for the leaves
- hot glue gun
-small amount of stuffing needed.

first we are going to make that square into a circle

i just free handed cut around the square (not too much and it doesn't have to be perfect either)

next i got my needle and thread, and i did a running stitch around the whole circle

1. once i made my way around i gently pulled on the thread to create a sort of cup
2. next i got some stuffing and placed it inside the cup.
3. then i gently pulled on the thread all the way and then made sure it wouldn't open up but making a few stitches across the top of the opening.

-next i wanted to make it look more like a pumpkin, so i took my needle and thread and went from the top of the pumpkin and placed the needle and thread through the middle of the bottom of the pumpkin.

-then i repeated

-and repeated

-until i had what looked like a bonafide pumpkin bottom.
-tie off the thread with a know on top.

-next we are going to free hand a few little leaves, and i sealed the fabric by placing fray check around the leaves. place them aside. and heat up the hot glue gun.

-now get a piece of DMC gloss (embroidery floss) and thread it.

-going from the bottom up, thread the DMC floss through the middle of the pumpkin.
-return going back down through the pumpkin leaving a big loop on the top part of the pumpkin.
-unthread the needle

-on the bottom make a know so the floss stays in place.
-do the same to the top part of the pumpkin

next hot glue your little leaves onto the top part of the pumpkin. :
you are done and now you can hang you're adorable little adorning pumpkin off your scissors.
yup, cute and festive.

now to think of something for the winter season...any suggestions???
:)

V and Co: sherwin william paint

confession: instagram and facebook are a lot easier and faster for me hence why it feels like i hardly blog these days.

the other day i took a picture of my new hair cut with my phone and gave a sneak peek of my third time is the charm painted house and put it on instagram and  Facebook.

today while i was trying to set my camera and was checking lighting to take a picture of a project, i snapped this picture:

notice the iPod stuffed in between the cushions

i looked at it and realized i've not taken pictures of my house in a loooooooong time.
why is that?
we've been here already a year and some, and i think it's because i haven't really done anything exciting to it, i've not put up many things on the walls, and i have so many things i want to do to it...that i just didn't think it was worth a blog post to talk about it.

but really it comes down to this:
 i could just post it on either of the other social medias and all you have to do is click "like" or double tap on the picture to give me a heart.

no need to leave a comment no need to say anything. just "like" or double tap.

i think before it was much easier to post a few pictures and talk about it on my blog because before i didn't have all the other social media networks that i have that are much quicker than a whole blog post. anyone else feeling this way?
it's cool, but sad all at the same time.
i want to take pictures again, i want to do a whole blog post on how i put up three pictures and added a plate to the wall, and not feel like i've just wasted everyones time because "hello...didn't you know you could just post it on facebook or instagram?" yeah i know. dumb.


k so here we are.
lets talk about what i want to do to the house:

this house is new. so of course i can't really justify a lot of changes because...well everything works well, somethings are not my taste, but hey not a huge deal. so here are a few things i'd like to put in the category of "if i had money to waste i would do this with it":
first i would change out the light fixtures. i would die for  this one. okay maybe not die. but i would feel like it would be the best fit. but for the $400 price tag. eh.
so this one is a good fit as well. and especially for the price...well compared to the first one at least.

then i'd like to have white cabinets. yes, i would. even when they will be not the coolest thing in the world to anyone else, they will be to me. i like white cabinets. BUT they are brand new, and not just standard stuff you can buy at home depot, these are are really nice more custom-y... so they stay.

also i would to place a nice chair in that corner where the rocking chair is. but it can't be huge, and it has to be super basic so i can change colors if i ever want to.
along with the new chair, i would love to make a linen cover for my sectional. pretty sure hell is going to have to freeze over before that one happens so, the plain brown sectional works great.

and last but not least i want a buffet. over by my dining table. i think it would be beautiful to have one there, but of course the ones i'm looking at are in the $1000+ range...and yeah, i'm too cheap of a person to do it. sooooooooooo, craigs list, and goodwill i will continue to frequent in hopes that one day i will find her. :)

the color on the walls are aloof gray by sherwin williams. this is the third time this house has been painted in about a years worth of time. it was painted what i like to call "Iowa brown" because everyone has this color on their walls it seems. well they do if they are buying homes with the builder we bought from and they build a lot of houses here. so yeah apparently this brown is popular, but i didn't care, didn't like how dark it was. and it kind of made me grumpy. yup, apparently i'm all about looks. >:/
so we lived with it for about 6 months. and we (actually the husband) decided for the sake of our marriage, i would not make the him paint.

keep in mind before we left utah he repainted the town house (white because it would go best with everything we had hodgepodged out while we lived in a storage unit till we sold it and i figured people could look at it as a clean slate). he painted that last house we had bought right before his company announced they were closing their doors, he painted the smurf house (and honestly anyone that painted that house alone should never have to paint again).
so as you can see he has EVERY right to say no to my wanting to change the paint color.

so when i asked a painter to paint, i thought maybe he could give me some heads up on colors. all the ones he picked where darker than the brown already on the wall. so i went to work on picking it out myself.

talk about an anxiety attack just waiting to happen. holy crap. one thing is to pick the wrong color and tell the husband "hey, so haha funny, i think i hate it lets go try another color." and another thing is to hire someone and pay three times if not more what it would have cost you to bully your husband into doing it one more time.

so, okay.  i knew i wanted a lighter color and i knew i liked gray but i needed a color that would not change purple in the light. and the main reason why i didn't go with gray the first time around was for this same reason. i loved the gray we did in our last house but in the evenings it always turned a pretty shade of periwinkle (i said never). i didn't want to make the same mistake for like my WHOLE house.. so i went with safe beige.
which was the worst mistake like ever. no i mean it, it was horrible.

for some reason it turned peach the minute it got up on my walls. i cried as i turned the corner of the main area when the painter was done. he didn't know how to take my reaction. all he said was
"it's not peach everywhere" which made it even worse because i didn't even say i didn't like it because it was peach!
you can see just a little of it here

okay well i guess you cant see it that well. but if you look in the mirror the light does something to the walls and it looks peachy yellow. just ask ANYONE (except my husband who will say on his death bed that it was beige, ahem, because he pushed for that color in the first place) and they will tell you.

so when the husband came home and i was like "it's all peaches and cream crap!"  he was like "you are nuts. its fine, it looks better than the other paint color. it will be fine."

no it wasn't.
for 8 months i tried to live with it, and for 8 months the husband would say "my that's a nice shade of beige" and i would banter back "you mean peach."
it was funny but not.
anywho, a friend (or two or three) got tired of hearing me complain, so one of them said "pick out your paint, and we'll paint this week, i don't like your peach either." okay.
so i couldn't commit to buying 5 gallons of mistake again so we started with my bedroom it went from this:

 iowan brown.

to sherwin williams sea salt 
a few things need to change like i need to paint the furniture (i'm thinking white) and i need to change the pillow in the front...but we'll wait on those things because for now we're good.

the husband came home and said he liked the "green" on the walls, i said it was "bluish green" there's a difference. he called me nuts again.
but he saw how happy it made me, and how calming the color is.
so the next day he said "did you narrow it down to one finally for the rest of the place? lets go and get it." we went and bought the 5 gallons of paint for the rest of the house.
and we started to paint it together.
i have a good man by my side.
oh and i love the paint.
it doesn't turn purple, it turns a sort of light slate blue in the evenings.
it's perfect.
and now i think i can start decorating.
now if we could just get the right shade of color to make the economy all better the world would be a happy place.
we'll talk soon.