Anything but a face...

The challenge at iheartfaces.com this week is "anything but a face"!

My favorite is one I took back in January:

head over to iheartfaces to see more!

iheartfaces, phone photo

I am super excited to see iheartfaces.com do a challenge entirely with cameraphones.
About 80% of my personal pictures are taken with my iPhone.  Seriously.  I also like to only edit them using photoshop express, a free app .


The reason I love phone photos is because they really are like shooting from the hip in a moment that you don't want to lose track of.  I use my phone to take pictures of my son doing crazy things or some beautiful field on the way to work... or anything really!

Here's H playing superman with his dad yesterday:

 

Go on over to iheartfaces.com to see some more great photos!

Happy Birthday Mary!!

Mary recently celebrated her second birthday. A perfect excuse for a project! For her gift, I bought a few items and made a few as well. Unfortunately, the sizing did not work out too well. I was super excited to get her these Tom's Shoes that my sister had been eyeing for a while but was unable to find at any stores (and sold out online). My sister loved them... Until she tried to put them on the next day and they were so narrow that they would not even go on Mary's feet! Odd though because all the reviews that I read online said that they fit great. I guess maybe Mary has wide feet. The good news is that they were able to exchange the shoes for a larger size that fit just fine.

Now, on to the handmade items... I used two different tutorials from Dana over at Made. First I wanted to try an up-cycled shirt dress. Unfortunately, my husband did not have any dress shirts that he needed to get rid of, so I went to the Goodwill instead. I bought two great shirts, and set the other one aside for a future dress. The shirts each cost $3.99, and then I bought a quarter yard of blue fabric for the waistband for $.49 at my local fabric store. I used my pattern from the 90-minute shirt that I made her a while ago to estimate the size. The dress itself came out the perfect size. I changed the pattern for the dress a little bit by giving it long sleeves. The sleeves turned out a little bit too tight though. I could barely get her arms into them. Luckily, That was a pretty easy fix too. There is one extra seam on the underside of the sleeve, but no big deal.






To go with the dress I made these ruched leggings (also from Made). They were really easy! I just love the buttons on the bottom. I only used three buttons because these are much smaller than the pair that Dana made.



The funny thing is that now if you ask her who made her anything in the house her reply is always "Aunt Laura."

It is hard to believe that this day was 2 years ago already. . .





And today we make a pretty cute niece aunt pair!





-Laura

iheartfaces winter wonderland

This week at iheartfaces.com the theme is winter wonderland.

For as many snowy pictures I have, my favorite has to be my son's first experience trying to throw a snowball and wondering why it kept sticking to his gloves.  It was like the ultimate comedy routine.

-meghan

Please Bring Lulu Back!!

Here is a very sad story. . . Lulu is the name of the doll from the last post who I made the clothes for. Unfortunately, due to my procrastination I did not get the clothes done until after dark on the night before Christmas. I wanted to wait to take the pictures during the daylight so that they would have adequate lighting. So I borrowed Lulu and the clothes back last weekend so that I could take the pictures. Mary's dad drives my husband to work each morning (my husband uses a wheelchair, so he cannot drive). So I packed up Lulu and all of her new clothes into a paper grocery bag with handles. My husband was going to give the bag to Mary's dad when he picked him up that morning. As we were leaving for work in the morning I brought the bag downstairs and set it in the lobby of our condo building next to my husband. He had to wait for about five minutes for his ride to show up.

Two days later my sister politely told me that Mary kept asking for her doll, and could they have it back. After a very confused discussion we finally established that Mary's dad had never seen the brown bag. So what happened to it? The bag was sitting on the far side of my husband's wheelchair, so Mary's dad could not see it. After five minutes of waiting in the lobby my husband forgot to mention the bag. They walked away and left it sitting right in the middle of the lobby.

I had just taken the pictures of Lulu, so I have posted a missing poster in the lobby with a plee to my neighbors to please return the doll. So far, she has not been returned, but I did get a call from a man who said that he saw my husband and Mary's dad walking away from the bag, but he was in a hurry so he did not say anything. He also said that the bag was still sitting in the lobby when he went through at 3:00. I got home a little bit after 4:00. I did not see the bag in the lobby when I got home. So frustrating!

Here is a brief reenactment of Mary's reaction:




Where is Lulu?



Please bring her back!

(please disregard the huge mess in the background!)

- Laura

SMILE! (at iheartfaces)

Ok, it seems like I can keep up with one photo a week themes at least!  This week's theme at iheartfaces.com is "smile."

It's another one where I had a lot of favorites, but this is the photo that makes me smile every time I go back through my files.  These brothers are twins and have a great relationship.  One brother has down syndrome and his smile is incredibly bright.  The other brother was actually harder to get a genuine smile out of, but when he gets to be the tickler, I saw it pop through!

-meghan

I'm Back. . .

You may have noticed that all of the posts lately have been from Meghan. . . Sorry for my recent absence. I have been so busy with my masters classes that I have not had much spare time. I guess that maybe I am a summer, winter break, and spring break blogger at least until next year.

Anyway, I have a project to share. My niece Mary got a new baby doll for her birthday recently. This is a side note, but with everything being manufactured in China these days my sister wanted to find a doll that was made in America. She could only find one company that still manufactures their dolls in America. Interestingly, the dolls come in parts and need to be assembled by the owner. It turned out that the doll was very easy to put together, and she was able to choose from many different face and body styles to personalize the doll. Here is what she looked like when she was done.




Hmmm, something is missing... She needs clothes! She had one outfit that my sister found for her around the house, but part of the fun of a new doll is changing her clothes. So for Christmas I made her some new clothes. I found this vintage pattern on sale at my local sewing store for only $1. You can't beat that!

I was hoping to make a few more items, but I only had time for the slip and diaper cover, a dress, and the jacket with the matching bonnet. They all turned out pretty well.





I love green, but when I choose the fabric for the dress I did not even think about the fact that Lulu has beautiful green eyes. A happy coincidence!





I think that the jacket is my favorite. It is so elegant.







The pattern also came with three different doll sizes which is nice, because now I can make clothes for any future dolls too.

Stay tuned because I have a few more projects to share. Maybe I can get them posted by this weekend? I hope everyone had a great holiday!!

- Laura

iheartfaces.com, favorite face

I've taken a lot of pictures this year.  When looking back to pick out my favorite, I have to say it would be this one of my octogenarian grandfather at his 60th wedding anniversary to my grandmother.  They are both so filled with love for each other and their families I feel honored not only to know them but to be related to them.

This picture he is holding back tears while looking at some artwork I drew for him and reading a card from our families.

Be sure to check out the other entries at www.iheartfaces.com !

The playmat is a big success!

I hope everyone had a great (and maybe handmade?) Christmas!  Hopefully everyone's grievances were aired properly and massive quantities of refined sugar consumed.

The highlight for me was setting out the playmat on Christmas morning and having my son run out to see it.  He stopped and just took it in.  Then he started pointing out all of his favorite places!

"My house!  D's House!  Cupcake store!  Library!  Fire Station!  Market!  I go to market now, mommy!"  And he handed me invisible fruit bought from the image of the market stand.

I was so proud.  I ended up finishing it with a quilt binding that he unknowingly picked out at the fabric store last week. He told me he wanted something made with orange stripes, so that's what he got.  Here are a few pictures of him enjoying the project!

Also, since I already sell maps over on etsy, I added a listing for a custom play mat over there as well.  Because every kid totally needs one of these!

-Meghan

The playmat has landed!

I am SO excited!  The playmat that I designed for Henry just arrived!  It's a snow (or cold, rather) day from work and he's napping so I ripped open the package and took some pictures of it.  It is amazing.  Yeah, it could use a good ironing but whatever.

The fabric is cotton twill and the cars on it will be part of his Christmas present (he's getting some plan city cars).

 

I can't wait to give it to him!!

-Meghan

Handmade Christmas, part 2

I finally finished up the design for Henry's play mat!  It will be delivered in the next few weeks on a cotton twill that is 58x36 inches.

He saw the picture of it on the computer and got all excited, yelling "Ooo!  That my house!  That library!  That d's house!"

The roads are 3 inches wide and I am thinking of buying a few plan city cars to drive around this town.

-Meghan

Handmade Christmas (part 1-point-something)

I've been thinking non-stop about this playmat idea that I have for Henry.

I am getting more and more excited.  I've been really busy and my scanner has been soooooo slow that I haven't gotten much done on it yet, but what I do have I'm excited about.

I have the base for the streets and green spaces done!  It is to scale at 42x36 inches and each road is 2" wide.  I have draw the library, our home, daycare, the farmer's market, a bakery, a fire station, a park and a few other trees and stuff so far that I need to get placed on the mat.

Here's what I have so far, I'm still making some decisions about which direction things should face.  I'm deciding between having them all face the same way or all face the streets they are on.  So tough to choose!

-Meghan

Silhouettes on iheartfaces

This week is for silhouettes on iheartfaces.com  Every time I go to this one hill I make people do a silhouette for me.  I have fun editing them later on and it's super easy to turn a silhouette into fun stationary (coming up later on that long list of projects)!

The best part about this shot was how quiet and reserved the little boy was.  Until he found this dandelion!

-Meghan

A Handmade Christmas, part 1

Last year every single gift we gave was made by hand.  From the photographs to the frames we built.  We did a fake wood learning tower for Henry and a felt house.  People got reusable grocery bags and muslin tea bags.

And, frankly, it was a lot of work.

But the principle of it was great and it was a lot of fun.  We're doing a mostly-handmade Christmas this year.

Lowell is building a mini-workbench for Henry and I have been inspired by all of the car playmats.

The time it takes to applique all of the things like Jill did on her blog seems overwhelming.  There are some great fabric ones on etsy where it is one yard of fabric with the pre-made design backed onto a cute print.

But, I think that I will design my own fabric and print it using Spoonflower's printing services.  I have designed fabrics in the past and been pleased with them.  Plus, if I design the fabric I can then make it personalized just for Henry.  It can have his library, Daddy's work, our playground and the grocery store.

I'm pretty excited and realize this is going to be a lot of time in front of a computer designing it!  But, I will be so proud of it when it's done.

-Meghan

iPhone photography

I've been really busy lately with my photography side business.  I'm madly trying to save for a new camera body.  But, at the same time I'm realizing that gear doesn't really matter.  Photography catches a quick glimpse of something and can tell a story, so what if that story is a bit imperfect.

Most of the pictures I have of my son have been taken on my iphone.  I don't always have time to run back to the computer room, grab my camera, switch out my lenses and attempt to capture something I want to remember.  I might be lying in bed watching Wall-E with him and have my phone on the nightstand and I want to capture something.  Or, eating dinner he is making a crazy face.  So, yeah, the pictures might be grainy and imperfect, but I am still happy to have them.

I'm going to be looking into good apps and exploring more on iphone photography and sharing it here over the next few weeks.  

But here are two imperfect pictures I took using an iphone that I am nonetheless glad I have.  They have been edited, but only on free iphone software, nothing else.

And, since it's my own child, these images are still beautiful to me.  I'm excited to explore some more iphoneography soon!

-Meghan

Hhappy Hhalloween Hhenry!

Here is the simple project I talked about last week. Ok, ok I know that it is not quite Halloween themed, but it is a little bit related. A while back Meghan mentioned that Henry sometimes refused to wear his underwear (he is potty training). She suggested that maybe she should make him some h underwear because he always wants to wear his h shirt. So I beat her to it.



The project was easy. I bought a package of boys underwear from target. I was amazed how hard it was to find little kids underwear that do not already have designs or cartoon characters on them.



Next, I printed out some large h's from my computer. I pinned them to an old t-shirt and cut them out. Then I pinned them to the back of the underwear and sewed them on using a zigzag stitch.



My personal favorite are the black skull pair with the orange letters. Very halloweeney.





You could do this with pretty much any letter, although some would be a little bit tougher to sew on than others.





-Laura

More iheartfaces

I am getting really addicted to iheartfaces.com

This week is "Pink Week" for breast cancer month.

I hate the stupid memes on facebook about cryptic things that sound sexual but are for "awareness."  Seriously?  That is ridiculous.

But, photos of cute kids in pink?  I'm all about it!

Here's my entry this week!

Relatedly, did I mention that the Down Syndrome network is awesome?  I did?  I'm going to do it again!  I have another photo shoot with a family who has twins where one has Ds in a few weeks.  Totally fun.

-Meghan

Colors of Autumn

So, I decided to go outside and capture three shots:

One looking up (couldn't help but want to do a long exposure and spin around with this one!):

One looking down:

And one looking out:

I think I got a lot of colors of the season.  Another fun thing to share later this week is that our playhouse is getting close to being done for the season and H loves it.  Totally adores it.  He plays in it all the time and really likes the old school plastic kitchen I picked up at Goodwill.

-Meghan