He's HERE!!!

My nephew decided to grace us with his presence a week early! Which is fine by me...and my sister too! Welcome little Noah. :) As I mentioned before, my sister and brother-in-law were keeping the sex of the baby a surprise, so up until now I've been sewing gender-neutral baby items. But once I heard the exciting news that they had a healthy, baby boy, I couldn't wait to sew something boy-ish.

I decided to make soft letters for his name - Noah. There are some great quick projects in Lotta's Simple Sewing for Baby book, and this was one of them. I walked over the the fabric store this morning (it's both wonderful and dangerous having one in walking distance) and saw these adorable iron-on appliques. I quickly decided to add them to the soft letters to jazz them up a bit. And who loves jazzing things up? This girl does.

These letters were pretty quick to make and if you felt so inspired, you could even make an entire soft alphabet. I used a zig-zag stitch along the border to prevent fraying. Lotta suggested the zig-zag or an overlocker if you have one. I wish I had one (hint hint Ryan...), but the zig-zag worked just fine.

I'm so excited to meet Noah I can hardly stand it. Just 4 more months until I can see his sweet face!!

This project was linked to The Girl Creative's

Just Something I Whipped Up Monday

Wedding Flowers

These days there are so many options when it comes to picking out flowers for your wedding. Silk, fabric, paper, and even items like button bouquets or egg carton flowers are becoming popular. Of course, you can always go with the real deal too.

Ryan and I are pretty sure we'll use real flowers for the ceremony, but are looking at more cost-effective options for the reception and centerpieces. I love the idea of making our own centerpieces and flowers, it's just a matter of choosing which to make. Here are some of the options "we're" (I think Ryan's just seen the egg carton ones...) looking at:

1. Egg carton flowers at the Intimate Wedding Blog

2. Oragami flowers at Style Me Pretty




3. Button flowers at Getting Married
What ones do you like the best? Any other good ideas?

Frizzy hair and headbands

I don't know about you, but whenever it gets muggy and humid outside my hair starts to do crazy things. Even on the days when I actually do my hair, the humidity does a good job of un-doing it. Needless to say, I love headbands. They keep my frizzy mass of of hair out of my face. And really, what more can you ask for?

I mentioned earlier that I bought a new Japanese craft book about hair accessories and I gave one of the patterns a go. At first, I thought it turned out too wide, but it's growing on me. I love that it's reversible and works well if my hair is down or up.

I ended up shortening the length of the main section by 3 inches to make it tighter around my head. My first attempt left it falling off my head. Now I just need to try all the other cute ideas in the book and see which works the best!

Excursion to China

Hutong in Beijing

Night market in Beijing

The Great Wall

The Forbidden City

China was great! Ryan and I arrived safely home after 12 days full of exploring Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau. Here is a condensed list of what we accomplished while we were gone:

• Ate the most amazing Chinese food I've ever had
• Bought great souvenirs
• Went to awesome street markets
• Saw some crazy eats: scorpions, snakes and cicadas to name a few
• Went to the World Expo in Shanghai, amazing!
• Experienced the greatness of The Great Wall in Beijing
• Haggled and bargained for most everything we bought
• Saw The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and Temple of Heaven
• Saw the preserved body of Mao
• Had the best tofu of my life, even Ryan loved it!
• Took a ferry over to Macau for the day

I love vacations. I'm so ready for retirement. Only about 40 more years, can't wait!

China!!!

So, I'm in China until August 17. Ryan and I are spending our summer vacation in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, woot! I'll be sure to post plenty of pictures when I return...until then, have a great summer!! :)

The new crafting book

I stumbled across this little book after making a quick trip to the fabric store for a zipper. Before I knew it I was browsing the books and patterns and walked away with this little guy. The title? I have no idea. I still don't read much Japanese. Maybe it's simply called, Headbands. Your guess is as good as mine.

What I do know is that there are super cute patterns and ideas for various headband and hair- clip accessories. I bought some cute fabric for making a thick headband with a cute modern bow. I haven't started it yet, but pictures will be coming soon.

I really like the headband below with the fabric flowers. I think it looks quite elegant.

Oh yeah, remember scrunchies? They're still a pretty big deal over here. I can't say I'm hopping back on that bandwagon anytime soon, but there's some cute enough ideas in the book that I might try. Might.

I love the hairpins and other hairclip ideas they have in here. I'm definitely going to attempt a number of these. Especially this little flower hairpin. Cuteness.

Dolls for Haiti complete!

Well, they're complete! I finally finished the faces and now I just have to ship them over to Sarah at Dolly Donations.

I ended up adding a little felt flower to the girl doll for a little extra cuteness.

The two boy dolls are pretty much the same except for the color of their pants. They're practically besties.

I'm hoping to ship them off before I leave for summer vacation this week. There's still time to sew your own doll, check out the Dolly Donations site for all the details!