Mom is too cheap girls…

While school shopping this year I fell in love with a suspender shirt from forever21 that I thought would look adorable on my girls.

The problem for me with being crafty and falling in love with things I see online is that I’m too cheap to pay $40 with shipping for 3 t-shirts when I know I can make them for a fraction of that. My girls always groan when I mention I’ll make them instead. They know that their mom has every intention of making them but sometimes gets sidetracked and forgets to finish them. So with picture in hand and promises to have them finished for school we headed to the store and grabbed a few supplies. $10 and a week later, I have to procrastinate a little, we had three of these-

Mary isn’t pictured because she couldn’t find her red pants and told me “Mom, how can I go to school in my shirt without red pants huh!”. I don’t know how I managed to go 13 years without a single pair of red pants? Needless to say she went, with tears and khaki pants with a different shirt so no picture. Kind of a shame since hers came out the best. Oh well.

Here is how I made mine in case someone else wants to give them a whirl. I drew an outline of the suspenders on pieces of freezer paper with a fine tip sharpie, nothing pretty or exact because I loved the hand drawn look of the original. I cut them out with an exacto knife and ironed them on each shirt.

Next I painted on black fabric paint with a paint brush and let them dry for a few hours, then I peeled off the freezer paper and added a little gold fabric paint with my paintbrush to the rings and bottoms of the suspenders.

After that all I had to do was pin on some stretchy sequin trim from the ribbon section and sew it down and sew on black bows. So easy and probably my favorite school shirts this year. Definitely this crazy girls favorite.

Little old lady

I mentioned last time I blogged, which I don’t expect anyone to remember because I’m a big loser and haven’t blogged much this summer, that Mary was turning 8. She was baptized on her birthday and it was such a special day for her. Her birthday just happens to be during Cody’s family reunion so there were a lot of family members there that wouldn’t have been able to come otherwise which I am so thankful for. We have an awesome family!

I like the idea of my girls having 3 white dresses of their very own- first a blessing dress, next a baptism dress, and hopefully a wedding dress- so I make a new one for each girl. I was running majorly late so I didn’t get very good pictures, yet.

Mary chose a dress completely copied from Corner House. Her dress is absolutely gorgeous and I was excited to give it a try. I just saw her pictures and did my own thing based on those. I was majorly bummed that the main fabric I ordered and thought was matte raw silk was instead shiny and I had no time to figure something else out. I don’t like shiny satin at all and it was too slick to hold the sash up. The sash kept sliding up and shortening her torso so I felt it made her look plus sized when she is not, and when I tried to tack it down it looked pinched and weird.  As much as I wanted our dress to look like the inspiration it did on the hanger (sort of) but not at all to me when Mary wore it,  which is disappointing but it wasn’t my dress and Mary loved it so that’s all that matters. She said she felt like Belle from Beauty and the Beast so my job was done!

 

For her cake she she was very specific. Drew me a diagram and labeled it specific. She asked for a blue cake with blue candles and “dolafins” jumping out of the water. Her cake picture looked so cute I should have let her decorate it! The control freak in me couldn’t handle all blue so I snuck some purple in there. Can I just shout out from my roof top how much I love Wilton and the big honking tips they make. I jumped on the rose cake bandwagon and can’t get off. Makes me feel all fancy and stuff.

See, I liked it so much that for Kennedy’s birthday 2 weeks later I used it again. It won’t be the last time.

 

Four out of six kids are in school all day and Kennedy, Jake, and I are getting quite a rhythm down. I’m busting out crafty things again and it feels great. Good things to come, which is really good since the show off in my has been underfed this summer :).

Have a great Wednesday!