I am just crazy about this costume!  We all love Where the Wild Things Are and I call my kids 'wild things' all the time. After making the costumes the boys tried them on and fulfilled my expectations...  

They stood here and tried to 'roar' at drivers as they passed by!

They knocked on neighbors doors and jumped out at them...

Then they tried to scare dogs with their loud rumpus roars!!!

                                                         Happy Halloween!!!!

 So, my Batman costume turned out so well that I had to make a Robin costume too!!  It was such a blast to see the boys run and sing the Batman theme song!!  Since making these costumes they are now putting in requests for other things for me to make! I love it!!

So meet the new Batman!!  

My son is so into superheroes right now and of course I had to make him a Batman costume for him to play in!!
 For some reason, Batman's costume looked pretty simple to replicate as opposed to the other ones I looked at. 
 

 So what I did was I took a pattern for a very simple pair of shorts I got from here and modified it and made them into pants.  First I traced the pattern onto paper and drew a curve where the blue underpants (thats what it looks like so thats what I call it) will need to go.  Then I just added the blue fabric where the shorts stopped at his knees.  
 Simple enough...
Then for the top I used the Raglan Tee pattern (it was all I had to use...) from Sewing For Boys. It was pretty straight forward with very little modifications.
For the Batman logo I used felt and did my best drawing work (I'll sew but I cant draw!)

As you can see...  He LOVES it!!!  He wore it for four days straight!  He wouldn't take it off even for his water games themed camp.  I love that about him!!  I love how much he embraces the things that fascinate him and grab his interest!

Thanks for reading and I'll post again soon!!!

How I made my own sewing labels

  Many times I wish I had a way to label the clothes I made for my kids.  I get confused which pair of shorts go to which kid because the sizes are so close together!!  I also just think its super cool to have my own tags on all of the things I made and gave away to friends! 


So I came up with a way to type my blog name on a spread sheet many many times and added a size just below so that when its folded in half you can see the size under the label.   I'll explain later in this post...
So to begin, I went and got an iron on transfer that I could print on from my printer at home.  There are several options, the store I was at was out of the clear transfers so I had to get the transfers made for images that will be ironed on dark fabric...

You could use any fabric you have, I used muslin because its so cheap and it wont show through once I iron on the transfer. 

 So you place the transfer on the fabric you have chosen and then you lay a sheet of tissue paper that came with the package.  This is important that you don't throw away the tissue paper!  I will show you why in a bit. 
Press your iron firmly down on the transfer and set your heat at Cotton/Linen.  Lift and peek at the ends to see if the transfer has attached itself to your fabric.

 

 Let it cool before you peel the tissue paper off.  This will give the transfer a chance to adhere to the fabric.

  And, this is what happens when you don't slow down to read the instructions first because you think you know how to do this yourself (ah, hem)!  I crumbled up the tissue and put it in the trash and used a press cloth for my first attempt and this is what happened!!  Once I realized what I had done, I read through the instructions and learned that the tissue paper was important to keep the transfer from sticking to anything else but the fabric below it!!

 This is my next attempt after reading the instructions!  It turned out beautiful!!

Next you get a straight edge, a cutting mat and a rotary cutter for separating all the labels.

  

After you've sliced each row store them somewhere and pull them out and cut a label as needed!! Its as easy as that!! 

 

 Next I will show you what it looks like when the labels are put to use...
Stay tuned!!!

Hope you are having a great summer so far!!
 Happy first day of August!!

Missy

Since I started sewing I would make all different kinds of projects and then give them away to friends.  I think they're getting used to receiving free goodies from me!!!  But I love it! 
This bag was for a friend of mine that was having her first baby in July.  Its one of my favorite projects so far.   I LOVED how the fabric choices worked together so well.

I even made a diaper changing pad to go with the bag.

Last but not least,  side pockets to fit not only baby bottles but bottles of wine too!!! 

 I just happened to catch this moment with my son while he was watching these spiders!!

 I love that he isn't afraid but instead is fascinated by them.








This picture captures the moment perfectly...

 This summer has been packed full of so many great activities!!  Right now the boys are really into dinosaurs (big surprise, eh).  Earlier this summer we went to the zoo to see the dino exhibit and we read several books that had stories about dinosaurs.  So to keep up with their enthusiasm we made 'dino world' at home! I got the idea from this awesome blog.  It has been a great resource for me as I try to keep up with great things to do with the kids.

I found an empty plastic container and filled it with a few inches of water and let my son look around the yard to find things he would want to use.

He loves to make bridges out of anything he can find...

He added some fairly large rocks to the container too. Looking for things to add and placement of those objects occupied his attention for at least an hour or so!  This is great because it held his interest for so long!

This is the exhibit at the zoo that we visited and then triggered this great interest of dinosaurs and their habitat!

This was such a big hit that the boys played here for hours and came back to it each day, adding and taking away from the container as they saw fit!