dslr, r u kidding? How do I get this thing to focus?

Playing around with my new camera today. Because I need another hobby? Lol, I just want great pics of the kids and I find it fun. Man, the learning curve is crazy. So after watching maybe 15 videos on youtube today I now know what ISO is, aperature, white balance, shutter speed, composition... now it's getting it all together... on a thrashing wee one... or a frenzied toddler... oh man.

So I still think I am getting better pics on my point and shoot Canon but I can see the potential in my new little dslr canon. If I can get that focus thing down on a moving child than things will be great. I'm not sure if it possible when in a low light situation.

I can't wait until Spring. Oh wait. That's today!

Here is a picture of Logan outside with me just messing around BEFORE the tutorials. I had no idea how to select a place to focus on.

I so wish I had known how to focus on the eyes before I attempted all this but all in all they turned out ok.

The one I got of my dog, Gunnar was pretty nice.

I like that I didn't have to edit any of the coloring at all. Just a light crop.

Then I tried some of Lucy inside with some moderate success! Still working on that focus. Gosh I love this girl's skin. Enjoy!

Oh and one last thing. I made that pretty sweet headband. We have to make them big to distract from that HAIR! Her cowlick is just not getting any smaller. Ah my love. So your love/hate relationship with your hair begins. Imma gonna get a quick tutorial of that one up sometime soon. It is SO easy and all you need are the materials and hot glue.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I am digging this baby girl dress making. Once I get over the fear of messing up, it's a lot of fun!

So, I made another dress for St. Patrick's day. A favorite of the lesser holidays. I had to make it because I found this fabric that I really love when hunting in Jo Annes for other things. It was my one purchase I allowed myself not on my list.

Head over to Amber's blog to check out the directions for this dress. It's the exact same pattern I used for the Christening gown.

Some things I changed up:
1. The sleeves - I copied  my t shirt sleeves again but cut them in half with an arc. I should have made them a little longer so that they bunch more. I ended up not having any gathers in the sleeves and I couldn't even get them all the way around the arm holes. No big deal but not ideal.

2. I again did not use interfacing, just cotton under the outside layer. I did not line the skirt part this time with cotton.

3. When I cut out the head piece from my pattern, I cut it on a fold so I can eliminate that step of sewing the two together. This helps it fit over the head later too.

This shows how you can take that bottom part off your sewing machine so that you can sew on the sleeves a little more easily. Sleeves are so hard!

After sewing the final piece on - the part that ends up on the inside of the dress, I realized my fabric wasn't laying down how I wanted it to. So, I pinned down everything on that folded down seem and "blind stitched" it down. I don't know if this is really what a blind stitch is but I sewed the inside fabric to the fabric underneath but NOT the fabric you see on the outside. That might not make any sense....

 Then I folded under the excess material and blind stitched that down. This has to be done by hand but nobody sees it so it doesn't have to look really good or anything.

 This is the dress inside out while pinning everything down.







Voila! The final product on my little model.

Lucy's Baptism

Yesterday was Lucy's baptism. A very important day in the life of our little girl. We were very happy to have Aunt M in from MN and our friends A and A and their family to witness the event. For Logan's baptism our church did full immersion. This church did not. It was more traditional. We also could not do it during mass because it's the middle of Lent. We had a private ceremony instead.  I know our family wanted to be there but it's one of many downsides in living so far away. Here are some pictures instead.

How many people can say they were baptized into the Catholic Church with no pope? Not many I think.

 I decided to make Lucy's dress. We don't have any heirloom Christening gowns and I had trouble finding anything I wanted online that didn't cost an arm and a leg. I decided to look around to see if I could find a pattern that I might actually be able to follow

I am very pleased with how it turned out. I followed the guidelines from this blog post and it turned out perfectly. I made a couple changes to the original set of directions. First, for the sleeves I used a copy of a regular adult t-shirt sleeve. When I did a practice copy from a t-shirt I found the length of a short sleeve T was perfect.

I also did not use interfacing. I used lace I found in the wedding section of Jo-Annes with an already scalloped, finished edge and made an inner skirt out of cotton. I also made both sides of the top with lace over cotton then just lined the middle with one layer of cotton. The gathers on this dress were CRAZY but we were still able to sew it all down. I told Lucy her head was not allowed to grow until after the baptism because it fit perfectly although snug over the head. I played around with a lot of embellishments and decided on a simple bow and cross charm.

It was a beautiful day for a baptism in March!

To our family, we will also email you the photobucket of pictures we have from the event. Thank you for being such positive supports in our lives.