What I'm Loving Wednesday and Oh, How Pinteresting!

It's the middle of the week and that means it is time, once again, for What I'm Loving Wednesday and Oh, How Pinteresting!

I love Wednesday's because I have built in blog fodder!

I'm loving that we are moving in less than 2 weeks. It is a stressful time, but I'm trusting that this is a great move for us and that we will be very happy in our new location.

I'm loving that moving in 2 weeks also means we can finally get away from our awful landlord. He has been the worst. To top everything off, he has decided to keep our whole deposit. We talked to him about breaking our lease and he said it was fine because our home would rent easily. Then last week he told us that he is keeping our deposit "to take care of the time that no one would be in the place." If he had said because we were breaking the lease, that would be understandable. But, he is just greedy and doesn't want to give us our money back. Anyway, moving on from that!

I'm loving that we are getting everything together to be homeowners! Eek!

(The beautiful home we are in a contract for)

I'm loving that we are planning to have a big 30th birthday bash/housewarming in August! Russ and I both turn 30 at the end of the month so it is a perfect time to celebrate!

I'm loving my sweet daughter. She is such a book worm!

("Ooh! A train!")

I'm loving this ginormous stack of newspaper Russ brought for me to pack with! I had been hoarding newspapers since we came back from Christmas break and Russ threw them all out, thinking he was helping. BTW, that is so funny because I am a very tidy person and I don't keep random piles of junk around the house so I don't know what he was thinking. HA! Anyway, so I asked him to find me some more newspaper and he went to the local office and they gave him this stack of old papers. Oh my! Overkill much? We don't have that much stuff!

I'm loving that I started packing yesterday. I didn't get very far, but again, we don't have that much stuff.

I'm loving our local McDonald's. How pathetic is that? It was redone last November and I hadn't been until a few weeks ago. They have a great play area that Chloe Jo loves and they have 3 touch-screen computers for anyone to play games on. We kind of like hanging out there now.

What are you loving today? Link up {here}!

This week I am going to show you all some of the crochet things I have pinned and am planning to get to sometime in the future.

Source: etsy.com via Lisa on Pinterest

I love these adorable owls. I'm not sure what you would do with them, but I need to make a few!

Source: etsy.com via Lisa on Pinterest

I'm so loving leg warmers! I want to make a pair for me and a few pairs for Chloe Jo. I guess I waited a little too long to make them because it is getting too warm for them now.

Source: sewingdaisies.com.au via Lisa on Pinterest

I love this heart garland. Um, missed Valentine's Day, though.

Source: willewopsie.blogspot.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Eek! I just think these are soooo cute!

Source: crazysockscrochet.blogspot.com via Lisa on Pinterest

I'm sure my new nephew needs this for next winter!

Link up {here}!

And so it begins.

Success!

Last week was pretty insane for us and it has just continued into this week. I'm starting to think I need to start packing because we are moving in TWO weeks. YIKES! How did that creep up on us so fast!?!?

Last week we left Monday morning to drive to Oklahoma to go house hunting. That is a long trip and I'm so glad that we only have to do it one more time. We made an appointment to look at 7 houses on Wednesday. I think we actually looked at 9 because we added a couple at the last minute.

Here we are ready to go meet the realtor to look at houses!

We left Chloe Jo with her auntie and cousins for the day. We walked into one house and ended up looking at it 2 more times on Wednesday and then looked at it again on Wednesday with my Dad in tow. I am so glad my Dad was able to come to see the house we liked. Once we got his approval, we were ready to put in an offer! We negotiated back and forth a couple of times and finally came to an agreement! This is the house we will, Lord willing, move into in May.

We are so thrilled to be in a contract. We are getting everything together for the home insurance and inspections this week. We are also trying to get all the loan stuff squared away. I hope everything goes smoothly and we really do get to move into this home!

And the other great thing about this trip was that we got to meet our new little precious boy! Here I am with my sweet nephew Brenson!

Eeek! Isn't he soooooooo precious!?!?

Kissee! Kissee!

And did I get any pictures of Chloe Jo and her cousins together? Nope! Bad Lisa!

I am so ready to get moved and for our life to slow down a little bit!

Baby Shower Success!

Whew! I am so glad to get the baby shower over with! Don't get me wrong...I loved planning it. It's just a little crazy around our house right now so it's nice to have that done.

I think everything came out great and it was a huge success! I am only posting pictures of the decorations and one of Chloe Jo because I didn't ask if anyone cared if I put their picture on here.

I was so happy with how the cake table looked. I think it turned out perfect!

I dragged the rocking chair from the nursery into the shower room for the guest of honor. It's the most comfortable chair in the church building!

I made 9 of these and hung them in 3 of the corners of the room (the fourth corner is where the door opens so I wasn't able to put them there). They were so easy to make! I wish I had realized just how easy ages ago!

And here is Chloe Jo enjoying her cake. She was so excited about this "party" and had a blast! She's not going to know what to do when it is her birthday and she gets to open all the presents and cry if she wants to!

Hair Bow Tutorial

As promised, here is a *quite lengthy* tutorial on how I do hair bows.

What you will need:

ribbon

hair clip

needle and thread

lighter

scissors

yard stick (or some other measuring device)

hot glue gun and glue sticks

You can use whatever kind of hair clip you like.

When CJ was an infant and I would clip the bows on her head bands, I used the alligator clips (second in the picture above). Now that she is older and I put them directly into her hair, I like the other kind (one on top).

The first thing I do is make the base of the bow (if I am doing a base anyway). I like to use the wider ribbon for this. For this bow, I am doing 4 pieces, each 6 inches long. I always heat seal each piece of ribbon before using it in the bow. To heat seal, just run your lighter along the rough edges. That will melt the ribbon a little bit to help it not unravel.

I lay my pieces out on the table before sewing to get them exactly how I want them.

Take your needle and thread (I always go ahead and tie the end of the thread before ever starting the bow making so I can just grab it and go) and run it through the middle of the pieces of ribbon. Pull it taut, wrap the thread around the middle a few times and knot it off in the back.

If you don't like the way it looks, just take out the thread and redo it. At this point, everything can be redone. Once you glue it all together, though...that's it.

For this bow, I went ahead and made a second base.

For the bow, I use the widest ribbon first. If the ribbon is wider, the piece is going to be longer, the narrower the ribbon, the narrower the piece needs to be. I usually cut the wider ribbon around 20 to 22 inches. Don't forget to heat seal the ends.

Cross the ribbon into a crazy eight position.

Take one of the loops and bring it up to the middle.

Do the same for the second loop.

Sew through the middle of the bow and pull tight. Loop the thread around the middle a few times and knot off on the back.

I decided to go ahead and make a second bow with a narrower ribbon.

To make sure I like the bow, I lay everything together before gluing.

Hot glue a narrow piece of ribbon to the clip you are using. If I use an alligator clip, I go ahead and glue the ribbon to the top and underside of the top. It just makes it look a little nicer.

I then cut a small piece of ribbon and made a knot in the middle. I just finagle the ribbon so each end has the pattern on top. You'll understand what I'm talking about when you do it.

Then glue all the pieces together with the ends of the knot coming around the backside and glued to the back of the bow.

Hot glue the bow on to the clip and there you have it! A gorgeous finished, custom bow.

Spring/Summer Outfit

I have a lot of fabric scraps leftover from various projects I've done. The other day I was looking through them and figured out that I had just enough of my favorite pieces to make Chloe Jo and skirt and matching shirt. I chose this pattern from the Fleece is Fun blog. While I think the pattern is totally cute, I kind of hate it. I didn't use a fabric with any stretch this time, but I actually used fleece the last time I made this skirt. The pattern has a drop waist that I just don't like. It is too tight even with fabric that has stretch. Luckily, my Chloe Jo is a skinny little miss thang so she will be able to wear it for a while. I had said I wouldn't use that pattern after the first time I made it and forgot. Now I really won't use the pattern again. At least she has a cute outfit to wear for now!
I chose to applique cherries on the shirt. I think they came out adorable and am very happy with it!
It was a little chilly the day she wore it so I had her wear her cute pink tights. A little overkill? Probably. But she's a kid so she can get away with it!
And I've been loving putting her hair in pigtails! I took her to get her mullet cut off in December and it has finally grown back out enough to put in pigtails. So cute!

I have some ribbon that coordinates with the main fabric of the skirt so I'm going to make Chloe Jo a hair bow out of that. Stay tuned for my hair bow tutorial!

What happens...

when you try to stick this

through this?

You get stuck!

At least her traumatic start to the day didn't diminish her cute smile.

I'm pretty sure that's going to bruise.

In other news, I have now been soda pop free for 5 (YES, 5!) years! I stopped drinking soda pop in February of 2007 and haven't drank it since.