Easy sewing project: turning sweater sleeves into leg warmers

I've had this grey sweater sitting in my 'to fix' pile (aka the pile of defected clothes shoved behind the chair in my bedroom) for about two years. I used to love this sweater, but one day I decided to take a omega-3 fish oil pill to-go, promptly forgot about it and then it ended up in the wash turning the bottom of the sweater a beautiful mustard yellow colour.

The sleeves were fine though so I came up with an idea to turn them into leg warmers for Miss Mila. I took a photo of the cut up pieces, but it didn't upload properly for some reason so pretend it's there. Basically I cut off the sleeves at the shoulders and then cut the bottom trim of the sweater to use for the top 'elastic' part of the leg warmers. I cut the trim in two (for the two leg warmers), sewed them together into a circle and then attached them to the leg piece. It literally took me 10 minutes to put it all together.

A super cute way to repurpose a sad 'ol sweater and Miss Mila wore them for more than two minutes so win-win.

On patience and getting down to their level

I find as the years go by that I have fewer and fewer patience. I have two pretty good ideas when it happened. When I had Leo I still had all the patience in the world. If he had little meltdown, it was no biggie I knew what to do. I actually have a video of us on a plane to Florida and Leo is restless and upset and I had a smile on my face.

When two kids are in the picture it's a different story. At least it is for me. Add to that the fact that they are only 20 months apart and you've go a whole new ball game. As my kids get older, they become more independent. More vocal. More demanding. And I'm constantly trying to figure out how to deal with it. I had a completely different upbringing than the one we're providing for our kids so it's all been an ongoing learning process (which it is for everyone, I know this...).

I get asked all the time how they play together and my answer is that they play really well together. They also fight really well together. I find the fighting so stressful sometimes, but I remember fighting with my sister. We'd throw things at each other! We'd sit on each other!

It's all coming back to me now...

Anyway when the high stress levels come into play, staying patient and calm is very tough for me. This is due to my need to control a situation (I am the oldest of three girls after all! ;)). I asked my friend the other day, who has three kids, where I can buy some patience. She said that you have to pretend. Only pretending takes patience too.

One day we had had a pretty stressful week and I just got down on the ground and sat at their level. I watched them. We played. We hugged. We laughed. There was no stress.

Every time I get down to their level it's like the stress melts away. They don't see a giant (ha!) looking down on them. They see their momma down on the ground looking at them and they love it. They respond well to it. I just have to remember this and keep doing it.

Tell me... are you a patient person? How do you deal with stress?

Moving right along...

Things have been moving right along over here in real life, some things are slow and some are a little too fast for my liking. The fast? Hmm let's see:

Some how this little girl turned two a few weeks ago.

And this boy started school

I've been spending my time with Mila on my own which has been fun. She's growing up so fast and it's neat to be with her one-on-one. I'm also slowly getting back into the swing of things for blogging and work. I'm attending BlogPodium this weekend so I'm sure that will help with motivation!

Hope everyone is doing well!

The Lucy Top (by Shwin Designs)

I'm sure I wrote somewhere that I wanted to get sewing again and when I found this sweet top pattern from Shwin Designs I bought it right away. I was going to use it for the Tonic Living fabric contest but I realized I didn't have enough fabric so I put a hold on it until last week. I'm not really sure how or why I got started, but I soon found myself upstairs going through my fabric trying to decide what I could use. 

I have a tonne of denim so I chose some of that for one side of the top and some Joel Dewberry antler damask in Celadon I had for the other side.

I love how this turned out. I love the damask with the giant antlers and bits of read and the denim helps to ground it a bit if I want Mila to wear something toned-down*.

Some notes: Over all this pattern was super easy to follow but I didn't love the photos that came with it. I'm a super visual person and I found myself lost on the sleeves. In fact I totally messed them up and I had to hand-stitch the bottom of the arm holes to make it work. Oh well. I'll have to look at it again or contact the Shwins to see where I went wrong for the next one.

Also I was going to put buttons on the front like the pattern photo, but I really love how clean it looks without them so I'll be putting a little snap on the inside of each side.

*I laugh when I say "toned-down" in the same sentence as "Mila" because she's developing quite the active personality. There's a reason why I chose to photograph this on my bench instead of Mila modelling it. She rarely sits still and when I did try to put it on her she started flailing this way and that and started crying :).

Hope y'all have a great week!

Mila's photobook

A while back I bought another groupon for a photobook and this time I used it for Mila's first year. I love having these around the house and to have for years to come, especially because I rarely print photos anymore. This book is smaller than Leo's which I didn't know until I got it in the mail, but the quality over all is still great and I'm pretty happy with it.

The front and back covers (as well as the photos below) are from our photo shoot with Nataal. I was so happy to have these photos in time for the book.

Hope you're having a great week so far!

miss mila - twelve months

Well it has come and gone - my little baby is now one. She is turning out to be a little firecracker. She has no fear. She's already making boys cry. She's got a glint in her eyes that tells me I'm. in. trouble. But I love her to pieces, so I guess I'll just deal with whatever comes my way.

Mila's First Birthday Party

We had a little party for Mila's first birthday on the weekend and the weather could not have been more perfect. It wasn't a big group but fun nonetheless and Mila seemed to have a great time with her friends and cousins.

We weren't going to do much in terms of decorations--hang a few crepe balls here and there; a few balloons and of course a cake but then I got an offer I couldn't refuse. My friend Tara, who lives in my neighbourhood, is starting an event company and asked me if I would be interested in having a dessert table at the party. She'd get some photos for her website and portfolio and I'd get a beautiful table full of delicious sweets. Um ok!

I didn't really know what to expect and basically let her go with her ideas. What an amazing job she did! Everyone loved it. There were vanilla cupcakes, a french orange cake, salted caramel truffles, raspberry, vanilla and chocolate filled macarons, sugar cookies shaped like a 1 and even a smash cake for Mila.

Can you say yum?

The party was fantastic and I'm so thankful to Tara for her beautiful work. She doesn't have her website up and running yet but if you're interested in working with her you can email her here.

miss mila at 11 months + a word on going back to work

Mila turned 11 months on Sunday and I feel like she's changed so much in the past month. She's eating what we're eating for the most part, she's climbing up the stairs (so far just the stairs on the deck), she seems to be communicating more with us and she's losing all of her baby fat!

She looks like a little toddler to me in these photos! Eleven months has gone by so fast. It's incredible just how fast it seems to go with your second. You've got two to watch, not one to focus on and all of his or her milestones. I was getting emotional because I thought about going back to work and that my maternity leave was coming to an end.

But then a funny thing happened.

I decided not to go back to work.

You may recall I had mentioned in an earlier post that I had decided to go back to work, and at the time I was 99.9% sure I was going to do so (at least that's what I was telling myself). But then I started thinking about my job and if I really loved it enough to go back this time. Was it what I really wanted to do? The answer was no. On top of that, my boss passed away, a few friends I had there left and slowly but surely the signs were piling up telling me to stay home.

The thing is that I still want to do something else to keep my brain busy. I have a background in freelance corporate writing/public relations so starting in September I'll be working on that as my part-time gig.

So that's it! Let the new adventures begin.

miss mila - 10 months

Except for the fact that Mila is almost always smiling, this photo sums up what it's like around these parts right now. Mila is non-stop moving! I wasn't sure she was going to crawl on all fours because she was shuffling around on her bum most days, but once I put her on her hands and knees a few times she picked it right up. And she's fast!

Her favourite thing to get into is the cat food and water. She loves to munch on the dry food (eek) and pour the water all over herself and bang the bowl on the floor. It's very strange to have to think about child proofing again. To be honest, I didn't do a ton of it for Leo - we just made sure for the most part that there wasn't anything crazy for him to get into and led him away from the cupboards until he didn't try to get into them anymore. I hope to do the same for Mila. We'll see. She already has a certain look in her eyes that tells me she's going to be way more of a handful than Leo was.

Mila is a great eater so far which is fantastic. I've only just started giving her finger foods, but so far she loves eggs and she absolutely loves kamut puffs - next to cheerios they are baby crack I'm telling you.

Happy 10th my sweet! xo

miss mila - nine months

Here she is at nine months. When did she grow up so fast?

then and now

Leo and Mila at similar ages. Love this little sweater (Poor Leo and his little cheeks!)

miss mila - eight months

Miss Mila turned eight months old yesterday. I'm sad that I'm on the other side of my maternity leave. I've been so flip floppy about going back to work but I'm pretty sure I'm going back now. I have a pretty good situation going in that I work from home most days which gives me a lot of flexibility for doing pick ups and drop offs. Also I found a daycare a couple blocks away that I really like. The only kicker is that they won't take Mila until she's 15 months old, so I'll have to figure out what to do. I'm considering keeping her home for those three months and then getting part-time care for the days I do have to travel to my office. Likely crazy but it'll only be for three months. We'll see...

Mila has turned into a champion eater - yay! Maybe I shouldn't jinx myself? She's still on purees mostly, but I did give her some chunks of sweet potato today and she seemed to really like it. She has already eaten more than Leo did at that age!

Her sleeping is pretty regular. She goes to sleep at 6:30 or so most nights and she'll get up a couple times but I just give her a soother and she'll fall back asleep until between 4-6:30 when I'll feed her. So far she's a super happy girl. Giving us lots of smiles and she's got her daddy wrapped around her finger already that's for sure!

Happy Eight Months little chickpea! Love Mama.

miss mila - seven months

Mila turned seven months today and let me tell you this girl is BUSY. I can barely hold her for five minutes so these days she spends most of her time moving around on the floor - sad I know. She's moving backwards now which is how Leo started. It's quite interesting how similar they are to be honest. Same mannerisms, same moods, relatively same sleeping habits and so far same eating habits GAH!

Mila isn't really into food (as was the case with her brother). She's tried zucchini, sweet potato, pear, dried apricots, oatmeal, applesauce, banana and avocado and she wasn't really spitting it out, but she wasn't opening her mouth for it either. Now she just zips her mouth shut - that's it! Anyway I'm not stressing about it because I did enough of that with Leo. I'm just going to try again in a couple days and take it from there!

Mila also started 'talking' yesterday. Basically saying ra-ra-ra over and over. It's a bit too close to Dada for my liking ;).

I had a lot of fun taking these pictures today. Leo was in the room so I told him to lay down with her. Mila gave him this squished up smile she gives me all the time when I'm changing her diaper. I love it.

They're really starting to interact with each other now. Leo will play with her and try to make her laugh (you can see some of that here) and today at a mommy meet-up, he was 'protecting' her from another little boy. It was really sweet. I just love these pictures I took of them today.

Just for fun, here was Leo at seven months. One of my favourite pics of him!

miss mila - five months

Mark says she looks like she's doing The Sprinkler

Miss Mila turned five months old yesterday. As I write that I can't believe it, but really the last month seemed a bit slower than the others. She's still growing up too fast!

Things of note are that she's really starting to become more and more vocal. I call her my little Taradactle - she's got quite the lungs! I'm sure she'll start talking early like her brother. If that's the case, I probably won't get a word in edgewise...

She's pretty close to rolling over, but hasn't quite figured it out yet. She's also starting to like the bumbo a bit more. Typically she lasts five minutes and starts to yell in her little dinosaur voice that she wants out now!

As far as sleeping... she was waking up a bit more in the past couple weeks, but I think she's starting to get back into normal routines. We'll see about that!

Well that's about it! They don't do much at this age that's for sure! You realize that after having an active two-year-old.

Take care and be well!

I didn't post last month's photo because it was the same day of that horrible shooting in Connecticut and I just didn't feel right posting it. So here is her four month photo.

miss mila - three months

Man is it just me or is time seriously flying by? I can't get over it to be honest. I have to check a million times that, yes it is in fact the 14th of the month and yes, Mila is another month older.

So far Mila is one happy baby. She still has a bit of her shrill crying going on (I have a bit of a ear drum impairment to prove it), but over all she's full of smiles. She's really starting to coo and 'talk' to us which is cute and I even think she's starting to teethe! She can't get enough hand-to-mouth action.

Mila is an excellent sleeper... once she goes down. Some nights it takes an hour and a half to get her down but others she'll go down right away. Once she's asleep, she doesn't wake up until 4-4:30 which has been amazing for my beauty rest. Leo was never like that so I just hope she keeps it up.

So Happy Three Months Miss Mila - here's to another fun month!

Get more Mila here: one month | two months

Happy Halloween!

Seems I have a lobster in the house!

My sister went to New Brunswick awhile back and came home with this lobster hat for Leo. It didn't quite fit, but I just turned it around and it does the trick. Yesterday I went to Fabricland to get material for the rest of the costume... total cost: around seven bucks :).

And we can't forget the little one! She's a pumpkin ballerina ;)

Have a great Halloween everyone!