A simple skirt and baby shower ideas

This past month, I headed out to see my daughter, son, and their families. I had seen a skirt here. I called my daughter and asked her to send me her measurements. She did so and I went shopping.

I hate looking for fabric. I don't seem to have the taste or should I say I don't have the confidence in my taste in fabrics. It took me forever to find what I wanted and I hope that she likes it. When I got to her house, I asked her to model the skirt.

It doesn't look too bad and it fits her quite well.

Here is a look at the back.

While I was at my daughter's home, she showed me the things that she had made for a recent baby shower. I was so impressed I took lots of pictures, but I will only share a few. These are the flowers that she made from tissue paper and hung from the ceiling.

Here is one of the absolutely beautiful pins she made for a thank you gift. I found the tutorial here.

That's all for now!

Buttons and Grandchildren

Recently my grandchildren spent the night with us while their parents enjoyed a much needed rest. The oldest children begged me to do a craft with them. Since my neighbor had recently given me a huge bag of buttons, I thought they might enjoy creating with them. It was a work in progress. At first they were going to sew the buttons on, but it soon became evident that they were going to use way too many buttons. It would take forever to sew them on. So we settled on fabric glue. This is the finished projects after I mounted them on foam board and finished the edges with binding, rickrack, and rattail.

CAPTAIN AMERICA'S SHIELD:

THE GIRL:

THE SWORD (DAGGER):

Here are the proud three together...

I would be so proud of my excellent grandparenting skills except by the time we were done, I was ready to shoot all three. They were all being so demanding and I had a 3 yr old and a 1 yr old demanding my attention too. How DO parents do it????

Jeanine's newest update

Jeanine and I took a trip to Minnesota about a week ago and came home with what sounds like good news. She went to the Mayo clinic in Rochester with the idea that they would check to see if removing the diseased part of her liver would lengthen her life and provide some disease-free time.

After checkups by the liver surgeon and throat doctor and a consultation with the oncologist there, they decided that she should come back in 6 weeks. At that time, she will get the appropriate tests to see if she is a candidate for surgery. From her old PET scan and CAT scans, they thought that it was a viable solution. Of course, after 8 weeks without chemo treatment, it is possible the cancer will have grown, but even that did not seem to deter them.

The problem has always been that the cancer is not considered to be just in her liver, but also in a lymph node in her chest. The interesting thing is that the spot in her lymph node doesn't seem to have grown. They are wondering if it is cancer at all. They also wondered if it was not a problem with the lymph node, but with the thyroid. If it is a lymph node, it is inoperable because of the consistency of that node and it's position in relation to lungs, windpipe, etc. If it is the thyroid, it is very much operable. Regardless, the liver doctor said that he was ready to operate despite what happens with the lymph node/thyroid issue.

So we are guardedly optimistic. The oncologist did say that the cancer will return sooner or later, but hopefully she will have some time pain free, disease free, and drug free.

More pillows

I wanted to make some birthday gifts for a couple of friends and since pillows seem my gift of choice, here is what I made.

This one was based on my pillow here. I used a fluffy, more expensive felt. I was a little sad because my eyesight is bad enough that I could not differentiate between the circles when I was sewing them. I ended up having a hard time knowing where to sew.

I sewed a zipper in this pillow, but white was a bad choice (but the only one I had at home.)

The second was for a moose lover who is remodeling her bedroom to reflect this theme. I found a reindeer silhouette in a book and modified it to look like a moose. I started out using leather for the moose, but I soon realized I didn't have the right sewing machine to sew on leather or the right scissors to cut out. I switched to felt and it looks pretty good.

I got the idea for it here.