Project of the day: Flower Girl Dress

So I managed to get the flower girl dress for my daughter completed last night! Here is the before (as I once again forgot to take a picture of the before I found it online...sadly no picture of it without the sweater on- but you get the idea).

It is a pretty cute little dress and is a nice ivory color so will look lovely with all the other dresses. Here is what I did. With the wider plum-colored organza ribbon I had purchased I pinned three layers of the ribbon over the belt (I needed three layers to make the ribbon opaque and look plum because I was unable to locate the ribbon in the same color that was not transparent). I then hand-stitched down the middle of the ribbon and around the button holes (the belt is buttoned in the back and there is no bow). Then I added 1 rose and several hyacinth flowers with ivory pearls to hold them on to the belt and the sweater to give it some more character. The weddings in the spring North of home so it may be sweater weather.

Here's how it looks now:

I think it'll look so darn cute with that head-wreath! Can check that off my list now :)

Crafting Project: Flower Girl headpieces

My daughter (who is 18 months old) has been selected to be a flower girl in an upcoming wedding for her Aunt (my younger sister). It occurred to me just recently that I have been in over 9 weddings personally (this will be my 10th as I'm in the same wedding as my daughter), and due to my family size (I'm the 7th of 10 kids with an extensive extended family) there's always some special event to attend. But I had never before realized how pricey it is to participate in a wedding with a kid in it too. Flower Girl dresses and head wreaths and shoes, baskets, etc are really not proportionally priced (nope- that child's size 5 shoe costs the same as my adult 6.5...I know I'm slightly behind for not realizing this before).

My sister has been an angel when it comes to allowing some wiggle room (since my daughter won't be 2 yet and the dress she had selected for the other flower girls didn't come in a smaller size) she allowed me to select a nice inexpensive ivory/champagne colored dress and I will be adding plum accents to it. (Her wedding will be lovely with sliver, champagne and plum as her colors). The dress I bought is cute and will be adorable when I add the plum sash to it. (I promise when I do it- I'll post pictures).

The sticking point for me was the head wreaths. My sister had selected head wreaths that matched the other flower girl dresses (and would have looked lovely with my daughter's dress too) but they were too big for my daughter's head (she is rather petite) and cost $30 a piece! Which isn't horrible, but since she's 18 months I think it would be wishful thinking to expect it to stay on her head past 2 minutes...and potentially will be trashed quickly). I luckily have a very understanding sister who allowed me to make my own head wreath for my girl (as her dress was different anyway) so here's what I came up with:

I went to Hobby Lobby with a swatch from my dress as I am short and had to shorten it to avoid the embarrassing potential tumble down the aisle (a plum color) and matched it to two widths of un-wired organza ribbon. Then I found a lovely cream/ivory/champagne ribbon. I also found small roses and a hyacinth in plum to use. Then I brought all home and measured my daughter's head so I would have the right length of wire to use. I do jewelry making for fun, so I had some jewelry wire to start from and few ivory color pearls to secure flowers with on hand.

I started with a circle of wire slightly bigger than her head, then wrapped a second wire around that and added flowers as I twisted to make a simple wreath. The roses were on a post so when I removed the post it left a small hole in the center- perfect for stringing the wire through, adding a pearl and then stringing back through the hole to continue wrapping. After I had made it all the way around I wrapped all the wire with the ivory ribbon (to prevent any poking or wire from showing) then wrapped it loosely with the plum ribbon. At the end I attached several long ribbon strands and made a bow to have the streamer look of the expensive variety. I think it turned out quite lovely.

Here it is on my little girl (while she enjoys her breakfast). The downside of course is that the ribbon and flowers cost $21 for all of them. (So only a 9 dollar savings) However my sister loved it so much she asked if I would make the other two for the other flower girls (and bonus- I used less than 1/3 of the flowers on the silk plants I bought). So It ends up being only slightly more than $7 per head piece- which is a huge savings for all of us. And I think these will look just a bit more lovely than the $30 ones as they are exactly the bride's colors.

Here are two of the finished ones- my daughter's is the large one and the really small one is for a little girl who will be wearing her hair in a bun and wanted a wreath to go around that instead of the whole head. Should look adorable on her too! I do have to go and get some more of the ivory ribbon, and I ended up using champagne faux pearls on the other two as I ran out of ivory ones and then I will be doing the other one. I should be good on flowers (as the little one used fewer flowers so the last wreath should be just perfect for the last little girl. Tada!

Yay for weddings allowing you to continue your crafting obsession and save some money in the process. Once I alter the little flower girl dress I will post about that too. I still have to re-hem my dress and then the extra material may be used for another project as well. We'll see.

January in review

I know I have mentioned I have been doing a lot of invite work (wedding invites, parties, etc). And of course we built a fort- which has been tons of fun, but in the back of my mind I was curious...what'd we spend. And since I want to be completely honest and straightforward on costs I'm going to share amounts (all except the actual debt amount which I don't feel comfortable sharing). So let's see:

We spent (minus the plumbing bill which was out of my control) a grand total of: $346 (I rounded up for ease) in the month of January! This included food, gas and any "other" items. How that broke down-
$158 on food (not bad considering we made guacamole for a party which was nearly $10 for avocados alone and made cupcakes from scratch for another- which remarkably were pricey).
$101 on other (gifts, household items like detergent, mailing supplies, etc) and then
$117 on gas...also not bad since my husband drives for work.

We were pretty proud of ourselves though- we made every meal at home this month and didn't eat out at all (except family dinners at other people's houses). We didn't go to any entertainment that cost anything.

All resulting in having a bit more to go towards our debt. I would love to say that it was thousands that could go towards our debt, but we've always been fairly frugal so maybe one to two hundred extra. Which, frankly isn't enough to cover the interest on a credit card, but it meant more of that payment went to the principal which is how things get paid down.

In addition, I have been doing the LearnVest debt boot camp which gives you tips to improve your financial standing. So that's been helpful as well. If you have any debt you've been pushing under the radar because you're nervous about facing it- it's a good tool to look at (also, free so definitely worth it).

Something else that has assisted us is this extra mild winter. This week I have played outside every day with my daughter because the weather has been in the 60s, but I've also had my windows open and the heat off for a portion of the day. That should make a big difference on the gas bill for the year (we do budget billing so we won't see a change right away). Also, part of that $101 above for other...I spent $40 (plus a $30 amazon gift card I had) on new CFL floodlight light bulbs that can be used in can lights for the basement to replace all the incandescent light bulbs. They claim you save approximately $40 per light bulb by switching so we should be saving $440 on those alone eventually. I'll do a review of them once I have them installed and see how they compare to our current light bulbs.

Also, for energy saving purposes, we put the fort back up downstairs to hold in all the warm air from the fireplace/heater we have down there since the room is so big. It's amazing what a difference in temp there is just going outside the fort and we can turn off the heater sooner.

So over all January was great for cost savings, but kind of was hard on my crafting...we'll see what I can do about that.

to leave you with something fun: here's a picture of my daughter enjoying our mild weather. Happy Groundhog's day!

Why can't we have a fort?

Have you ever, just for the fun of it, made a blanket fort? If you haven't do it as soon as possible. It's way too fun to put off. My husband and I were sitting around playing with our daughter and we determined she loved crawling under the blanket with us when we played peekaboo, and had a ton of fun when the whole family sat in the floor under the blanket so we wanted to make her a REAL fort. We made one this last weekend with the help of a few friends, a bunch of sheets and blankets, a lot a twine, a tall easel, a couple boxes of binder clips and one screw. In addition, I think there were perhaps 20 or so pillows involved. We started in the corner of the basement room with the pole as one anchor, the pin on the hinge of a door as another anchor. The third anchor we attempted as a command stripe and hook, but the weight of the blankets was just too much for it, so we decided to go for one screw in the wall to make sure it didn't fall. The ceiling was attached to command strips and did just fine that way.
This tent fort is huge, it has all our seating in it, a coffee table for playing games or having a picnic on, our TV and entertainment center (so it feels a bit like a really cramped movie theater) and piles of pillows for our daughter to jump in  (see her having fun there). It had a tunnel entrance and a separate 'crow's nest' in the corner too. We have played in it every day since it went up, but it has to come down for a party this weekend so, it's been fun (we decided to leave the screw in case we needed it back soon:) ).
Have you done anything silly and fun lately? If not, I highly recommend it.

Projects for fun/freelance and an update.

I've been rather productive the last few weeks in all areas that have been more or less volunteer.
I have completed an awesome bridal shower invite (turns out I managed to work in the bride's favorite pattern- so that was great), a blog's logo and word mark in addition to their header (check it out), a wedding invite set (for a different bride), and a logo for a friends of a library group. I love doing projects that allow me to flex my creative muscles (in addition to my normal job- since I am a designer in that capacity as well).

It's been nice being able to do these creative projects that are a bit more fun as I have a little more personal options on them so that's been nice especially to get my mind off of our financial goals.

We had a bit of a setback with our financial goal in that our water heater died. Talk about frustrating. 15 days into the new year and we had to shell out a little under $1000 so we could replace our water heater (the old one was leaking, and frankly...I like at least warm showers). If you remove that from the equation (as the broken car ended up being a faulty item that got replaced easily) we've been doing wonderfully- Only have spent $71 on every none-billed item (including food- which is less than $40 of that). If we keep this up we will be right on track for doing well with our pay-off goals. Go us!

Now if the house/car and other emergency fixes would just play along we might just be able make a good show of it for 2012. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. I can't decide if I want to divulge the entire debt payment process or if I even want to admit to the world what I owe on things. So I'll get back to you if I decide to share.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the little projects and creativity.

Goal for the Year!

Sorry for the massive delay in posting. Just got back from a WHOLE week vacation to visit family. My hubby and I determined we have never been on a vacation longer than 7 days in the 7.5 years we've been together. In fact this break from work for Elliot was 11 days off in a row- so we felt pretty spoiled! The vacation was nice and we saw lots of family and friends, but in the back of my mind I am always in full time mini-panic mode because of work or finances or a combo of both. Work for me has been a bit slow the last few weeks so I have been stressed about that- so I worked for about 2 hours while on vacation because the work came in, but let's be honest- two hours in 11 days, not so great.

Don't know what it is about the winter that makes the printing industry slow...I guess the clients are recovering from the holidays (and since they generally have ordered their holiday cards by November that seems like the last thing to do for the year).I must admit this time of year always gives me the winter blues. All the holiday decorations come down (I have put out a few valentine's decorations to brighten the house a little bit), but overall it's not nearly as festive, and with the stress of lack of work and surprise car repairs that I am waiting to hear about (Elliot's car broke down on the way home last night...go figure) I've been a bit out of it anyway. I've never been much for New Year's resolutions- especially since I always manage to break them and then disappoint myself, so I try to set goals for the year as I take stock of the previous year.

This year, Elliot and I are going to try our best to get as much paid off as possible so these dry spells of work for me don't potentially cause financial disaster. We are very careful with the funds we have and haven't ever missed a bill, but the issue we run into is that things break, need fixing, or just aren't working out anymore so once we pay off something we roll that money towards some new project instead of paying off what we already are paying off quicker). This isn't really a huge deal...most of our debt is really low or no interest, so by making the payments to avoid interest (so you know those promotional balance things where it's same as cash within X months) all works out hunky-dory, but in the back of my mind the what-ifs are driving me crazy. In actuality, if we manage to pay off everything this year, I wouldn't need to work, but all my income could be saved up for projects and retirement since neither Elliot or I receive benefits through our jobs, so we really need to get on that. (See what goes through my head constantly...wouldn't it be nice to not worry about this stuff)!

So here's what we are going to try to do: We have made a deal with each other that we won't buy extras throughout the year. For example- I'm a sucker for going to the grocery store and buying items that aren't on my list (even though I arrive with a list). That should be a big money saver (especially because I already have 4 bottles of bbq sauce in my pantry because I remember while shopping that the bottle in the fridge is almost empty)!So we are going to try to stick to lists and get back into the habit of doing menus and buying only what is needed for the menus as to not waste resources (You wouldn't believe how often I end up throwing out produce that was well intended, but remained in the back of the drawer well past prime).

We already have the cheapest cell phone plan, the cheapest internet, the cheapest car insurance, health insurance, etc. available (and we don't have cable or other paid TV , but do subscribe to Netflix (to avoid the cost of going to movies and other expenses associated with date nights (no babysitter, movie-theater snacks, gas, wear and tear on the cars, dinners, and of course the cost of the tickets)). We also live in a great city for free entertainment (all the museums and zoos have free days/times) so we don't have to worry to much about entertainment for us- especially since we seem pretty content just hanging out.

Other money savers I'm going to try to do are running the dishwasher only when I can't possibly fit another thing in it and the same for the washing machine. We already don't use any extra electrical items (all our large entertainment stuff and anything that pulls a current when it's off, is on a power strip which is off when it's not in use). In addition, we do cloth diapers for our daughter (with a high efficiency washer it is about $3000 savings compared to disposable over the course of time a kid is in diapers if you have diapers that grow with the kid like we do) as well as made my own cloth wipes to use with them so we've got that going. In addition, I have containers in the toilet tank to reduce water consumption with every flush). I also, don't use the dry setting on the dishwasher to save a few cents there as well as the standard CFL bulbs in place of incandescent. Our new windows should definitely help with the heating/cooling bills and I was even contemplating doing this with the dryer (don't worry-our's is an electrical dryer so no toxic fumes).

I look forward to trying to compare our costs from this year to last year- (I admit that I keep my calculator in the games portion of my computer, because I love figuring out math/accounting stuff) and seeing if we saved overall...(I'll definitely be able to tell if we did, by what's paid off as well).

Do you have any other brilliant ideas as to how to make everything last longer/be more efficient? The catch is, I can't buy anything to make it happen. I want to see how much we can save- it could be fun! (though I fear it will negatively impact my crafting...hmmm).

(I know this blog post is more serious than normal- so here's the last of the Christmas presents I made :) )

Here is a treasure box I made for one of my nieces (I made one for her older sister when she was 2, so now the younger sister has one as well to stash all the fun finds in. She seemed to like it.

This is a wooden box with a clasp that I painted with metallic acrylic paints, both inside and out. I was informed her favorite color was pink, so I did all the flowers in pink, the box itself in blue, and the vines and insides in green with highlights of pearl-white on the name and centers of the flowers.

Turned out cute:)

A new quilt for a friend

I gave away one of my recent hand-made Christmas gifts, so now I can post about it- don't you feel lucky!

I have a friend who has been asking nearly every time I have seen her, "so When are you making me a quilt?" in a half joking manner. Deep down, I know she has wanted one for quite some time so I asked her what colors would look good in her home. She gave me a whole list and I selected yellow, plum and gray (she has a very modern looking style, so that color scheme works well). I also selected a fun, yet classic pattern to hopefully keep the quilt stylish longer. The fabric I used is kind of fun. The Plum were nearly solid color with light plum polka-dots. The yellow is nearly solid with swirls of white, the gray is gray with a white decorative print and the dark gray is actually black and yellow flowers.

I made a fairly small quilt- just 9 blocks, so definitely a throw size, but I took into consideration that my friend has a dog, so I made sure to select machine washable materials and backing. This quilt actually doesn't have any batting, I used only the top and a fleece backing so it is both soft and warm. In addition, I didn't do typical quilting either- it is just sewn on to the backing like you would do a tie quilt (but with thread and no bows) so that I wouldn't mess too much with the soft backing.

So there you have it. I've been a busy elf. (Don't you just love my little model? I know I do- such a big help!)