Strawberry Newborn Set

You guys, it is so fun to be an auntie!  And it is so great to sew newborn things without having a newborn of my own!

We were so lucky to have my husband's sister and her husband and new baby in town when we returned to Portland from Tokyo--they live in San Francisco, so we weren't sure when we would get to meet the baby.  But they were here!  And we even got to take a trip to the beach with them!

This outfit starts with a sad story though--I actually sewed the outfit pictured above in June, and mailed it to Baby Cousin from Tokyo.  I also searched high and low for an infant sized jinbei, which I finally found and mailed along with the strawberry outfit.  But boo hoo hooo--the package never arrived!

Luckily I had enough fabric to start over again, so I dusted off my Portland machine when we arrived and gave it a try.  The old girl could use a tune-up probably, but she performed admirably!

Here's how the set turned out on the second go-round:

I was just going through the pictures of the original outfit, and I had almost forgotten that I made a second hat that was also lost--unfortunately I'll have to wait for our shipment to arrive from Tokyo to remake that one, since I didn't bring any of that fabric with me.

The main difference between the original set and the new one is that the first time around I made the hat reversible.

I didn't have enough fabric to do that this time, but it's still cute even with only one option!

The hats are the free baby hat from Zaaberry's pattern and tutorial.  To make mine reversible, I used the pattern for the knot-top hat, but instead of cutting a separate band for the bottom, I added 1/2 the length of the band to the main part of the hat pattern and cut out two from each fabric (so four pieces total).  I then sewed the two striped pieces together and the two strawberry pieces together, like I was making two separate hats.  BUT, I left an opening towards the top of the striped pieces, where the knot would be tied eventually, so I would be able to turn the whole thing right side out.

Once I had the two hats sewn, I turned one inside out, and slid the right-side out hat inside the wrong-side out one, lined up the raw edges at the bottom of the hat, and used a zig-zag (or serger) to sew around the opening.

Then I could pull the whole thing right-side out through the hole in the top of the striped hat.  I hand-sewed the opening closed, tucked one side inside the other and tied the knot, and flipped the brim up! Tada!  You do have to untie the knot to reverse the hat.

The shirt is the Tiny Tunic free pattern from iCandy Handmade.  She also has another version with a contrast peplum.  So cute and easy!

And last but not least, the pants are the Just Hatched leggings from Made by Rae, another free pattern!

I love how these patterns all go together, and how easy it is to combine different prints.  I fell in love with this strawberry print knit in Tokyo, and I'm wishing I bought more than 3 meters--it was only 200 yen (about $1.70) per meter!

Also, check it out--all three items fit Baby Cousin at the same time!

I'm pretty much dying from cuteness.

A new dress for my kindergartener!

I planned ahead this year, and made a dress just for Little Sister's first day of kindergarten.  And lucky me, September's Project Run and Play theme turned out to be Back to School clothes, so I can link this up!

I may have overplayed that point (wanted to make sure she actually agreed to wear it on the first day!), because now she thinks she will ONLY wear that dress on the first day of kindergarten--I really hope that doesn't turn out to be the case!

The fabric is a fun take on traditional Japanese prints--she loves the bunnies!

This is the second time I've sewn a Desert Rose dress from the pattern by Caila Made.  I just love the proportions of this dress!  The first one that I made (from naniIRO double gauze) fit Little Sister perfectly, but this time I sized up anyway so that it would last longer--it's really a summer dress, but I thought that with the extra room she could wear a shirt under it, and it will definitely still fit next summer.

And pockets, of course!

Also, this time I made the straight skirt instead of the angled one.  It is a bit less twirly but still plenty full!  She loves the big skirt on this dress.  Which reminds me--I did add extra length to the skirt.  It's a size 5 width but the size 8 length.  I feel like I could go even longer and Little Sister would be happy.

Taking it for a twirl

One issue that I had this time around is that I used a pretty heavy fabric for the skirt, and since the bodice fabric was lighter, the seam where the skirt is gathered looks kind of bulky.  I would advise sticking to the same weight of fabric for the bodice and skirt (or a lighter one for the skirt) to avoid this.

We found a new fun mural for taking pics by our house--but I had to be careful about which parts of the mural I used!

Don't look now...but there might be a big wolf right behind you!

We couldn't get a babysitter for the photoshoot so Little Sister had to bring her little ones with her...

They didn't get too fussy.

 And here's the actual first day of school look!  The weather cooled down enough to require a little sweater, her choice instead of layering a shirt underneath.

Halloween 2014: Peter Pan and Tinkerbell

I don't know how it happened, but the kids came up with the idea all on their own to be Peter Pan and Tinkerbell for Halloween this year!  I thought our themed costume days were over once they started having their own opinions, but somehow it worked out!  I went and bought fabric before they could change their minds, because at our house once Mom has bought the fabric, there is no more costume indecision.

Thanks to the wonders of Nippori Fabric Town, I was able to get the fabrics I needed for Tinkerbell's costume (dress plus winter fairy coat and trim) for about $4.  I had to spend a little more to get the great french terry I used for Peter Pan's pants and hat (I spent $6), and I bought a pre-made green mens' shirt for his tunic.

I'll do a quick run-down of the Peter Pan costume, since it was pretty straightforward, then I will share a little more about how I made the Tinkerbell dress and winter gear.  Isn't it nice that Tinkerbell has some stories where she gets bundled up, so I can make my daughter put on a coat and she'll still be in costume?

Winter fairy photobombed by Peter Pan

Like I said, the Peter Pan tunic is just a men's t-shirt.  I cut jagged lines along the sleeves and hem, and cut off the neck binding and cut a small slit straight down to mimic Peter Pan's collar.  That made the neckline pretty wide, so after The Boy tried it on I added a couple of angled seams from the neckline to the top of the shoulder to make the neck opening smaller.  Done!

I used my modified Hosh Pants pattern that I have used previously to make pajama pants for these Peter Pan Pants (I like to call them the Peter Pants).  I wanted them to be slim, since Peter wears leggings, but I wanted The Boy to possibly get use out of them as sweats after Halloween, so I didn't go full legging.

Flying

He had a belt from last year's Luke Skywalker costume that worked well--he can carry his Pixie Dust in there!  For the hat I mostly followed this tutorial, and I used this one for the boots using leftover fabric from my denim challenge outfit from Project Run and Play.

I had fun with Tinkerbell's dress.  I cobbled together ideas from a few different tutorials to come up with a shirred back tank dress with a double square circle skirt, and I think it worked great!

Very twirly

If you want to do something similar, I recommend adapting this free shirred back sundress bodice tutorial and adding this circle skirt (another free tutorial) to it--the points from the double square are perfect for mimicking Tinkerbell's leaves, I think!

Shirred back

I was only planning to buy a meter of fabric, and when the woman cut it for me it turned out there was a little over 1.5 meters on the bolt left, so she just gave me all of it for the price of one meter--which was only $1! (well, 100 yen).  And I was lucky she did, because I used almost all of it once I decided to make the double skirt.  Since I used a woven (a silky satiny stuff, which was not as difficult to work with as I feared it might be), I hemmed the skirt layers, which wasn't a big deal time wise.  I lined the bodice since the fabric was pretty thin, and I also added a layer of thin interfacing to the front of the bodice.

If I were Tinkerbell though, I might be a little chilly walking around in October, so I thought I'd try to make a winter fairy jacket.  I was so excited to find this quilted fabric (it's the same on the front and the back) for only $4 a meter!  And I only used half of it making this cute little coat!

I self-drafted the pattern using a t-shirt pattern.  I did french seams on the sides and shoulders since there's no lining; the fabric is double-sided so I wanted the inside to look nice and finished and also lay flat and feel comfortable.

The front and back dip down a bit to mimic the jagged leaf hem on Tinkerbell's coat.

The white crushed velvet trim came in a wide ribbon, so I just attached it like bias tape all the way around and as cuffs on the sleeves.  And I used a magnetic clasp to hold it closed!  The green quilted fabric is silky and has pin dots on it, and I've told Little Sister that she can use it as a jacket even after Halloween--I'm pretty proud of how it turned out!

I couldn't find any good green knit fabric to make leggings for her (or a shirt for Peter Pan for that matter), so I bought a pack of Rit dye in Kelly green and dyed a pair of white leggings out of our drawer for the winter wear.  Amazingly, they came out exactly the same color as the dress!  I would have liked them to be lighter, but at least they don't clash terribly!  I added some more of the velvet ribbon at the hem.

The dye match was even more amazing because I actually bought the dye for turning a white shirt green for Peter Pan.  But I couldn't read the fabric content of the white tee I bought, and while the leggings came out very green, the shirt came out a soft baby blue.  Not great for Peter Pan, but it was perfect for Tinkerbell's wings!  I had planned to buy the fairy wings but couldn't find any (except for fancy expensive ones for adult costumes), so I followed this tutorial to make our own, adapting the shape for Tinkerbell.  And I didn't have any white tights, so I improvised with 100 yen store t-shirts--both the one I accidentally dyed light blue and a plain white one.

And finally, I couldn't forget Tinkerbell's shoes!  Luckily these little white fabric shoes are easy to find in Japan--they are used as indoor shoes for little kids at school usually.  But they were a great blank canvas for fabric paint and a pom-pom.

If you've stuck with me this far, you get a reward--the silly pictures we took of these costumes! I would have loved to get out in the park for some fun outdoorsy shots, but it's been rainy and they get to wear the costumes to school tomorrow and I was afraid they'll get ruined before I got a chance to get good photos if I didn't just go for it.  These guys were so funny anyway.

Sneakerbell

Telling secrets

Toot noises: always funny.

Oh!  And we will be visiting Tokyo's unique Disney theme park, Disney Sea, on the day before Halloween!  So the kids will be able to wear their costumes to the park and be a part of the Disney Halloween fun.

Mother-Daughter Matching!

I have to admit, I think it's fun to make matching clothes.  Whether it's coordinating outfits for the kids or in this case mommy/daughter dresses from different patterns with the same fabrics, I just get a kick out of it.  ESPECIALLY in this case, because Little Sister specifically requested a dress like mine--or as she puts it, "Let's be matchers!"  How could I refuse?  Especially when it's a way for me to get her to wear something that isn't pink or purple.

The Ruby Dress from Made by Rae and The Cupcake Dress from Baste and Gather

Sis has a couple of halter-style tops that she has been wanting to wear almost every day, so when I saw that Baste and Gather was offering a free printable halter dress pattern, I knew I wanted to make it for Little Sister.  I asked her to choose her fabric from the small stash I have here in Tokyo, which was when she found the leftovers from my Ruby Dress.  That fabric is PERFECT for this pattern--a floaty cotton that somehow isn't see-through at all.  This would be the most comfortable thing to wear on a steamy Tokyo August day.

However, Little Sister refuses to wear a dress without pants underneath it these days, for some reason.  AND she always wants to wear socks, and won't wear any of her sandals.  She is a total crazy person.  When we took theses pictures at the park, she was so sweaty, but wouldn't take the pants off.

It's HOT out here!

Definitely having a bath tonight.

Anyway, I made a few alterations to this pattern, the most obvious being the elastic halter strap.  I love the look and adjustability of the tie straps in the original pattern, but we are working on Little Sister's independence, particularly in our morning routine, and the elastic puts the dress into the "I can do it myself" category.  It was a little tricky to get the length just right--long enough to easily stretch over her head while still keeping the bodice up high enough.  The elastic in the back portion of the bodice helps with that too.  I keep debating whether to go in and shorten the neck elastic a little bit more--it does tend to sag when she's been running around, as you can see above.

Another alteration was that since I was using scraps of fabric from my dress project, I wanted to just use what I had.  My skirt pieces were about 6 inches wider than what the pattern calls for, and a couple of inches longer.  I just went ahead and used it all, rather than having useless scraps.  Little sister would never complain about another foot of fullness or a little extra length!  I'm really happy with the way the skirt turned out.

How do YOU feel about it?

I did have to cut off a couple of inches of elastic in my back panel--I cut out a size 4, and Little Sister is still on the small side so tightening up the elastic really helped with the fit.  I probably could have cut off even more, but I kind of like the way the lower back makes the skirt into a bit of a high-low skirt.

As soon as the dress was finished, Little Sister wanted to wear it to the park, and she insisted that I change into my matching dress.  I agreed, with the stipulation that she would have to pose for a few pictures with me to show off our twin outfits!

This fabric was a find at my local Walmart in Portland that made the cut for traveling to Tokyo with me.  I had two yards that I had bought at $4/yard, so I'm pretty excited that I was able to get two dresses out of it!   And now I have used every last scrap of it up!

The DIY Frozen Birthday

Honestly, this year with our preparations to move overseas, I was so ready to go buy licensed merchandise for a birthday party and call it a day.  HOWEVER, my daughter, like every other girl in the known universe, is obsessed with Frozen, and therefore there is no merchandise available (at regular retail prices, that is--if you want to pay quadruple markup on Amazon, you have lots of options!).  Luckily, Frozen is a pretty good theme to DIY--even in March, when all of the snowflakes and winter scenes have long been absent from the clearance shelves.

How's that for repurposing Rapunzel's wig from Halloween?

Here are the elements we used to put together a really fun party--I'll go through them for inspiration for anyone else out there trying to put something like this together without spending an arm and a leg or too many hours of their lives!

I almost forgot to include the invitation--I was so proud of it!  I was able to put it together using PicMonkey--I love this photo-editing site so much.  Then I had them printed at Costco (5x7's are something like 30 cents each) and put them in our leftover Christmas card envelopes.  For the ice castle background I used a free download of desktop wallpaper that I found online.

I got some hilarious feedback on the invitation--some girls displayed them in their rooms, some sisters were even fighting over who got to keep it!  Little Sister has hers pinned to the wall by her bed.


Decor:  Primarily, we used snowflakes.  The kids cut out some, and I cut out lots (what can I say; I'm faster!  And I actually love cutting out snowflakes.)

We used them to decorate our main snack table/focal point:

Background is a light blue plastic dollar tree tablecloth.  It was really see-through, but once the snowflakes were on it wasn't too distracting.  I also cut a piece off that was just the right size to cover our kitchen table, where we put the grown up drinks.

Some of the snowflakes were decorated with free printable Frozen images (free printable party kit available for download from Homeketeers)--I printed them on computer paper and the kids glued them down.  We used printables from this kit for other elements of the party too.

We added some tulle (an 8-yard roll from Dollar Tree, I only used a little) and more snowflakes to our dining room light, and strung some snowflakes in the window of our front door too, to add to the atmosphere:

I thought I'd find more uses for the tulle, but this was about it.

Gift Bags:  We also used snowflakes to turn our plain colored party bags (10-pack from Dollar Tree) into Frozen theme bags--Snowflake + picture of a character (or two) + name I printed out from the computer.

Carrots = Olaf's nose.  Ice cream is frozen, so that works too, right?

Our gift bags included ice-cream shaped bubbles (3/$1 at Dollar Tree), a carrot straw (5/$1 at Dollar Tree--easter seasonal stuff, or a snowman's nose?  You decide.), some glittery snowflake stickers ($2 for 30 stickers on Amazon, each kid got 6 stickers, so 40 cents per kid), a little tiara (59 cents at Party City) and a sucker that reminded me of an icicle (3/$1 at Party City, we attached the Frozen tag). The boys got a sparkly pencil (10/$1 at Dollar Tree) with a Frozen label instead of the tiara.  Oh, I also didn't buy enough of the ice cream bubbles and then they ran out, so I supplemented with bubbles in a carrot-shaped bottle--inspired by Olaf's nose.

Sparkly pencil with printable straw flag

Prizes for the games (all from Dollar Tree)

Food:  The main course was an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins:

The birthday girl got to sample flavors and she chose chocolate chip mint with chocolate cake, which was yummy.  I was totally impressed with their decorations!  We provided the snowflake sprinkles and the paper Elsa and Anna, which I printed and cut from this website.  The assembly was pretty painstaking--I don't know that I would have done it in hindsight, but they did turn out cool and they were dramatic on the cake.  I stood them on bamboo skewers--make sure not to put them too close to the candle!

For our other snacks, we had

Snowman Noses (baby carrots) and Snowflake Apples (sliced into circles then cut with a cookie cutter--this was the one snack that was more labor-intensive than it should have been, but they were a big hit).

Reindeer Chow (some sort of trail-mixy stuff from Costco) and Icicle Sticks (pretzel sticks coated in white chocolate bark)

And Snowball Snacks (Pirate's Booty)

Didn't anyone ever tell us not to eat yellow snow?

We labeled the water bottles "Melted Ice" and our juice boxes were "Arendelle Punch."  I used the free printable straw tags from this free Frozen Printable Party Pack and wrote the kids' names on them to keep boxes from getting mixed up.

I made labels for all of the foods using images I found online--the kids got a kick out of looking at all the pictures.

And finally, our activities:

I printed out a bunch of Frozen coloring pages for the kids to do as everyone was arriving--the girls were totally into it.  Don't know how that would have gone over at a boy party, but MY boy was into it.  At least the pictures of Olaf.  And I don't know what I was thinking printing out equal numbers of both Anna and Elsa--I had to print extra Elsas twice to keep the peace.  Coloring happened again at the end of the party as people were leaving.

We played Pin the Nose on Olaf (pretty self-explanatory):

an Icecube balancing game (each kid had a partner and a spoon, I gave one partner an ice cube and they had to walk it to their partner, transfer it, and the partner came back the other way.)

I liked it, and it was really cute to see the concentration on the kids' faces, but it wasn't the kid favorite.  Maybe with an outdoor party this would have worked better, but it was really rainy and soggy here that day.

And Cold Snowball, our version of Hot Potato.

Down to the final four

What worked out really well was that we were using the Frozen soundtrack for the music (obviously), and as kids got "out" of the game, they joined a sing/dance-along to the music while the other kids finished the game.  We ended up adding another round of JUST sing and dance-along at the end.

I also had a bunch of white balloons that I was planning to blow up to play "keep your snowball off the ground" in the backyard, but it was too muddy.  Particularly when the guest of honor had this outfit to keep clean:

Her auntie bought it before Christmas!  Lucky thing, since they've been sold out for months I guess.  Pretty fantastic birthday present.

We had so much fun, and Little Sister was totally delighted when the girls called her Elsa when she arrived at school this week.  None of the preparation I did felt like too much to me--it was all pretty simple and affordable, and I was having fun doing it, and the kids enjoyed it, so it was a win.  I know they would have enjoyed themselves even without the food labels and theme activities etc, but I get a kick out of coming up with that stuff in a manageable way, so we went for it.