April's Summer Dress

Remember these dresses I made for a friend? Well of course I had to make one for April. I was waiting for some new fabric to arrive so I could make it. The fabric is by Heather Ross and I love it so much for this project. Now that I have the shirring worked out it only took me 30 minutes to do the whole thing.

  She is so cute in this dress, I wish she could wear it everyday. I'm thinking of making her a sweater or jacket to wear with it so she can wear it into the fall. Any suggestions? It can be sewn or knitted.

The End of the Summer Garden

Things are starting to wrap up in my summer garden. Even though the weather wasn't great, things overall went really well in the garden this year. I've decided to give a fall garden another go (last time we had an early frost and I lost it all) so I'm planting for that.

 Tri-Color Beans

 Acorn Squash

 Apples

 Red Pontiac Potatoes

Wild Blackberries

So far this year we've got 33 lbs of english peas, 19lbs of potatoes, 27lbs of zucchini, 8 lbs of cabbage, 6lbs of beans, tons of kale and 6lbs of blackberries. 

We are going to have a lot of pears and apples ready soon. I'm also expecting a lot of tomato.

I've planted more kale and brussel sprouts for the winter. This week I'll be planting fall peas, carrots and beets (I already planted fall beets but the slugs came and ate every single sprout to the ground) and in September I'll plant winter lettuce and spinach. I might try chard though I've never had success with summer chard maybe the winter will be better.

Birthday Sundresses

My friend's daughter celebrated her 4th birthday this past week so it was time to make her a cute summer dress. I decided to make one for her younger sister too since I missed her birthday earlier this year.

The yellow is the birthday girl's dress and the green one is her little sisters dress. I love the yellow, it is such a summer color. I would have liked to have made both dresses from the yellow but I ran out of that fabric.
I used the pattern for the Heather Ross smocked sundress from Martha Stewart's site. I did encounter quite a few problems with this dress. One was that I think the video that goes with this pattern isn't very helpful. Heather Ross mentions changing the tension when sewing the lines but actually I found that the tension did not need to be changed but the stitch width did. I sewed these using the longest stitch possible on my machine. Also the bobbin does not need to be as loose as the instructions make it seem. Really it just doesn't need to be as tight as the machine would make it but there does need to be some tension.
In the end I really love these little dresses. I will be making a couple for April when my new fabric arrives!

6 months old

Halfway. Seriously...we are halfway through April's first year. It's been such an awesome 6 months; tough but amazing.

 We've reached some big milestones. April can crawl and loves to laugh. She's been really moving. It still sometimes surprises me how far she can get in such a short amount of time. Nothing like a crawling baby to make you realize how many tiny things you keep in your home.

 She still loves to be read to and has recently developed a taste for books. It's really hard to get through a story when the baby keeps trying to put the book in her mouth. She also still enjoys music. She seems to really be listening when I sing to her now which is really cool. We are going to start the Sing and Sign class here in town to start her sign education and expose her to some other songs.

 I'm in love with this baby's laugh. She thinks it is hilarious if someone else in laughing and she is constantly making me laugh. She also seems to think that I'm super funny when I have the hiccups. I just love when I hear her laughing, I don't think anything makes me smile like her laugh.

Summer finally arrived here on the west coast and we've been loving it. April is still the water baby she's always been so we've been out in her splash pool almost everyday. I took her to the beach but the Pacific waters were still too cold for her. She enjoyed the sand though. We love to lie under the pear tree and enjoy the warm breezes. April is fascinated with grass. We've also been able to lie in our hammock at night. Ahh...