If you are in the Salt Lake City area on Saturday June 18th, we are having a Boutique sale at Brenda’s Quilt Shop!  This is at our Home during our yard sale.

Everything we currently have is on sale and needs to be sold so that we can make some new things for the upcoming holiday season!

All of our items are discounted from our regular prices and will be up to 50% off if not more!

Come by and see us at 6275 West 3705 South in West Valley City from 9 AM to 1 PM and get some great deals on homemade crafts and holiday items!

Hello everyone I hope that you are having a great winter.  I love this time of year.  But I love it better when it is OVER and Spring is in bloom.  I am getting ready for Spring already.  I love to plan what plants I will plant this year and what fruits and vegetables that I will grow in my garden.  I love organic fresh home grown foods.

This week I decided to make my baby Tristan a new smaller portable crochet blanket.  I made him a wonderful blanket when I was pregnant with him, (Tristan loves it) But it is a large crib sized blanket and it is too large for him to drag around.  Tristan is starting to roll places and he is already doing the beginning motions of crawling, and he wants to take his crochet crib blanket with him everywhere.  He gets tangled in the blanket often when he is playing on the floor.  Tristan is the type of child that loves textures and he loves the feel of string, ribbon and yarns.  So I decided to crochet him a smaller portable blanket that he could crawl around with and not get tied up in.   Because Tristan loves the feel of strings so much I have added on lots of tassels for him to grab.  He loves to just twirl the strings in his fingers.  If you have a child that loves strings also, I would suggest adding a bunch of tassels to a small blanket for them.

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Hello everyone,

I hope that you had a wonderful week.  It was a great week here.  Everyone is healthy and the Weather is Wonderful.

This year one of my New Year Resolutions was to get more organized.  We all have this goal in some form or another.  This year I wanted to come up with a system that was easier for my children to know what chores were expected from them each day, so they knew when free time was.  I also wanted to come up with a system so each person in the family knew what their job was for Family Home Evening.

Family Home Evening in our family is when we set aside one hour, one night of each week to talk about lesson from our religion that we want to teach our children for that week.  We each take a turn teaching the lesson.  The children love to come up with Games to go with the lesson that they are teaching.
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Hello everyone,

I hope that you are having a great week.  It has been a fun week for the family.  It is nice to get back on a normal routine.  Leatha has started her science fair project this week and it was fun to work with her.  Leatha is doing a project about natural foods versus man made or man altered foods.  Basically natural versus chemical or chemical enhanced foods.   She is doing a comparison between Twinkies and home-made yellow cake (not from a box), Whipped heavy cream versus Whipped topping, Fresh apple slices versus Fast food chemical enhanced apple slices,  and fresh home-made French fries versus the  typical fast food chemical French fries.   We have placed samples of each out on a plate and put them in a room temperature corner of our kitchen.  Over the next week we will see the difference between each item of manmade chemical versus natural foods.  It should be very interesting.

As promised I told you I would tell out about what Cameron received from the family this year for our homemade gift exchange for Christmas.

After looking for a long time in the craft store, Amelia decide that she wanted to paint something for Cameron and when she saw the collection of treasure chests she was very excited.  She decided that she wanted to make him a treasure chest to put all of his money in.  Cameron was using a plastic jar as a piggy-bank at the time.   She picked out the size of box she wanted and she asked if Dad could cut a hole in the top so Cameron could place his money in.  We thought this was a great idea.  Cameron needed a new bank.
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Hello again folks!  Justin Here.  Below is the second part of the snuggie pattern from Tuesday, check that post out here if you missed it.

The only thing left is to sew on the pockets.  My children love pockets so; Leatha place 2 pockets on each Snuggie.   Cut out the size of pockets you want.   Leatha wanted oversized pockets.  Sew a hem on the top of the pockets with a one inch seam.  This strengthens the top of the pockets.  Now place the pockets on the snuggie a few inches lower than where the person’s waist would be.  Place the Pockets even distance from the center line, at the same height as each other.

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Hello everyone!!!

Boy was it a busy holiday season! I hope that everyone had fun the end of 2010!! I know I did!

I had a great time with my family.  For Christmas this year, we decided to make a special present for everyone in our family.  We had a lot of fun with this.  My children are very creative and did a lot of work on each present that they were giving to each other.   This was such a fun idea that my children have asked to do this every year, so now it is one of our traditions.

I wanted to take a few posts and show you what my children did for each other to give you inspiration on what you can do for others in your family.  These homemade gifts are wonderful for grandparents.  What grandparent does not love an item made from their grandchild??  You can make these gifts for any holiday.

I will start this post with what Leatha made for her siblings.
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This is continued from Tuesday: Christmas Presents For the Kids: Tristan part 1

Once the zipper pull is past the place where you have already sewn, then lower the zipper foot and finished sewing in this side of the zipper. This helps to keep your zipper sewn in straight.

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Hello everyone!
I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was perfect! I love spending time at home with my family.
Starting this week, I am working on making Christmas presents for my children. We have a tradition that every Christmas eve, the children get to open one present from the family. That present is always some form of sleepwear. That way the children have nice new pajamas on for all the photos that are taken Christmas morning. My children love their pajamas that I have made each year. Each year I try to do something different for each child, and this year is no exception.
This post is about what I made for Tristan. Tristan is my wonderful 4.5 month old baby who is very wiggly at nights. He does not like to stay under any blankets. To help him keep warm on this cold winter nights, I want to sew him a sleeper sack like I have had for my Girls.

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Hello everyone,
It has been a beautiful November for us! I love the Fall.

This week I did not do any repurposing. I actually made some new items from fabric that I purchased from the store. I do have more repurposing to come, but I did not have anything that I could use to make pajama bottoms for Cameron and a new Sunday Dress for Leatha.

My children love to go to the store with me and pick out their fabric for me to sew their new items. Leatha enjoyed watching me sew so much, that last year for Christmas we purchased her, a sewing machine on Black Friday. The sale was fantastic! If you have a child or teenager, that you would like to get a sewing machine for, check out the Black Friday sales. Get a great deal!

Now Leatha has her own sewing machine, so I do not have to share mine. Leatha used to take all of my scraps and sew them into stuffed animal clothing, doll clothing and aprons for her brother and sister. Now she can take my scraps and sew what she wants, when she wants. She has even made a few layer ruffle dresses for school. I am glad that she enjoys sewing as much as I do.

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Wow,

What a Wonderful and busy Halloween season.  My family and I had tons of fun this year.  We hope that you also had a wonderful season!  We had a great time decorating and trying new things this year.  We loved the family activities that helped to decorate for Halloween.

But Halloween is over and the decorations are being but away.  So it is time to get ready for the next season.  No, it is not Thanksgiving yet!  It is the great season of FOOTBALL.  Football is what my family does from now until we set up for Christmas.  Now, I am not the hugest football fan, however my family is full of huge fans.  I love to support what they love.   My idea of watching football, involves watching the first 5 minutes of the game, then leaving the room to go work on any craft, then I return at the end to see who won.  I leave the family to enjoy the sport.  I do however love watching a football game in person.    I enjoy the game more.  For family nights this year we are going to try and attend some games from the local high school or even some University games.

To support Cameron’s love of football, he wanted a new Broncos shirt.  But he wanted my old Bronco shirt that I made for me years ago, but worn seldom.  The shirt was in great condition, so again I am repurposing one of my shirts into a shift for one of my children.  You will notice that even with a button up shirt, it is the same guidelines to repurpose the shirt into a smaller size as with the other shirts that I have done.

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