Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

Well, this weekend was one big curve ball thrown our way.  We went out yesterday to do some quick errands and get my son out of the house and we found out the hard way he had a stomach bug.  So, we ended up going home and taking care of him all day yesterday and detail cleaning the back seat of our car (which in all honesty needed it anyway).  As a result of yesterday my husband and I were just exhausted today to the point of nearly not being able to function.

To stay awake I decided the only thing to do, once I knew that my son was feeling better, was to get some work done.  So, I got some work done.

As goals for the week went, I got a decent amount done all things considered.  So, let's get to it!

First up, I have a story to tell.  It involves the pillow above.

Ages ago, when my daughter was just a few months old, I went into a used store and looking through the various blankets and baby things (as I was still getting things for my daughter) I stumbled across a quilt.  A beautiful baby quilt.  It was embroidered, quilted, patched together with beautiful fabric.  Someone had put a lot of love into that quilt.

It was also very well worn.  To the point of making me sad.  It was stained in a lot of places.  There were holes where something had caught the fabric and ripped it and the batting underneath.  It was in somewhat sad shape.  But the thought of the stories that went into the making of that quilt.  The usage of that quilt.  I had to buy it.  And it was 1.00, so really who could pass it up?

I held onto that quilt for years with the intention of doing my best to rebuild what was broken in that quilt.  I ran it through load after load of laundry, trying every trick in the book to remove the stains.  I think it still smells of Woolite, honestly, from the sheer amount of time it spent soaking in it.

Once I realized the stains weren't going away, I tried to fix the holes.  Unfortunately, fixing a quilt with holes through the batting as well as the top was just outside of my ability to fix and make look good.  But, still, I held onto the quilt wanting to do something with it.  To make it live again.

And then it came to me recently when I stumbled across it in my fabric stores.  I was about to put it back in the pile of material, yet again, after all of these years and then stopped myself determined to make something out of it so it could see the light of day again.

So I started measuring and realized I could make what I like to call a "half pillow" out of it.  What I do is when a cheap pillow starts to get trod down (which how quickly does that happen right?), after I wash the pillow about five times, is I open one end and then fold the batting in half and stick it back into the original pillow case and then sew it up half way down.  And voila!  A 1/2 pillow.  It makes a nice throw pillow without a lot of effort and I happened to have a pillow to use so I made one and then used the quilt to make a pillow sham for the pillow.  I'll give the pillow to my daughter for Christmas.  She asked for "fancy things" for Christmas this year and by golly I think that fits the bill!

I mean just look at that embroidery.  Regular embroidery, ribbon embroidery (which I really need to work on mine), lots of lace accents.  It's just beautiful!  Here's the other side...

Yes, you can still make out a stain here or there, but I think that helps add to the character of the finished product.

I've decided to use the material that I can get together from the remnants of the quilt that are left to make a tea cozy for my tea pot.  I've always wanted a pretty tea cozy, so the quilt material definitely fits the bill and I'm pretty sure I'll have just enough material to make it (and if I have extra I'll make a pretty hotpad for the tea pot to sit on.  Squee of excitement here *laugh*).

 Next up, I wanted to start getting ready for Halloween this week as it's going to take me a while to get materials together for one and for two I had to do some creative things to make some stuff work, so I was curious as to how it would all turn out.

My daughter asked for a Harry Potter theme for Halloween and never one to shy away at an opportunity to get my geek on when it comes to Harry Potter, I started thinking on what to do for it.  I've done a Harry Potter themed Halloween for my daughter in the past, but I wanted to make it a bit fancier this time around as I'm hoping to have a small party so she can invite some of her friends from school.

And so I hit Pinterest for ideas and found some cool stuff.  I quickly decided that I wanted Honeydukes to make an appearance at the Halloween party because...well it's the candy shop for crying out loud!  So, I went looking for Honeydukes printables, but didn't find any.  I, not to be defeated went around and found some pics of the Honeydukes sign from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, went into my photo shop program and made some of my own stickers to use.  A package of 1.00 treat bags from Target and I was in business.

I then used the clear plastic that covered the treat bags to make the windows in a Bertie Bots Every Flavored Beans box.  I found it on Deviant art through a Pinterest link for something else I was looking for and thought it was so cool I had to give it a shot. 

It was kind of a pain to put together as it didn't want to fold right, but it worked out alright in the end.  I'm going to put some allergy safe jelly beans in it and use it on the treat table at the party.  And hey, for 1.00 plus a piece of sticker paper and some ink I thought it came out pretty well.

I also found an acceptance letter to Hogwarts on Deviant Art and printed that off and then found a Platform 9 3/4 ticket through Brandy's Harry Potter post on the Prudent Homemaker.

Overall, I thought everything turned out pretty well!  I printed off some more things that I'll work on making later, but so far so good.

If you'd like to check out some of the things I found for yourself, feel free to check out my Halloween Board on Pinterest.

I made my daughter a ankle length skirt to go with her Christmas gifts made out of the prettiest pink Asian fabric I found at the used store.  I thought it was so pretty, but there wasn't enough to make a dress, so I made a skirt out of it instead.  Currently it's ankle length on her as I do worry about how much she could grow before Christmas, but it turned out well.  I'm proud of myself as it took me all of an hour to make it and that's with double folded seams too (to protect the material from fraying).

By the way if you want to make an easy skirt pattern for your daughter?  Take the waist measurement and double it (plus whatever you have for seam allowance...in this case I added 2 inches for the folded 1/2 inch seam).  Then take your length measurement, add two inches for the elastic waist to go in and whatever your bottom seam allowance is and start sewing!  The extra material around the waist will gather as you pull the elastic to size and the length can be hemmed.  Easy peazy!

I also got the home made Bisquick made, so it feels good for that to be done.

So, now onto this week's goals!

1.  Make table runner and tablecloth out of fall material (yup, I punted this down the field again).
2.  Work on reorganizing bedroom.
3.  Get more things bagged up and take to used store to free up corner of bedroom that I'm going to need.
4. Take inventory of material stores and figure out what needs to be replenished.
5. Take apart desk and move bottom half into bedroom to use as a dresser.
6.  Reorganize pantry better now that canning season is done (I need to rearrange to make sure I have things in the right place for usage).
7.  Reorganize counter space in kitchen to plan I sketched out.
8.  Make out goals list for next month and get shopping goals finalized.
9.  Clean and oil sewing machine.  Change needle (it's time).

And there you are folks.  My goals for this week.