Follow Me on Pinterest
Showing posts with label Photo Shoot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Photo Shoot. Show all posts

10.05.2011

9 months old!


I can hardly believe that Everly is already nine months old!


Evy is now crawling everywhere!  She moves from room to room a lot quicker than you expect.  Time to get a gate at the top of the stairs!  I love putting her in skirts and dresses, but they tend to get in her way, so we tuck them in in the back to help her get around.  

 

 She still prefers to stand rather than crawl.  She pulls up on furniture, toys, my legs, anything she can get a good grip on!  She only uses crawling as a means to get to the next piece of furniture to cruise around.  A few times she has decided to just stand up all by herself without pulling up.  Then she will stand there in a wide stance trying to balance.  She stands on her own for a few seconds at a time.  I am thinking she will probably be walking in the next month.  The older kids all walked fairly early too, so it will not be a surprise.



Besides eating flowers ;)  she is eating lots of foods.  She loves most fruits and veggies and all kinds finger foods.  She still doesn't really like a bottle, but will drink from a sippy cup .  She would rather drink from a straw though, so we have a toddler cup with a built in straw that she mostly uses.  She doesn't really love juice, which is fine with me, so she mostly drinks water, or occasionally soy milk.  She is most definitely allergic to dairy, just like the rest of the kids.

Evy is our most talkative baby at this age.  She babbles and squeals all day long and she looks like she really thinks she is having a conversation with me.  I love it.  She really seems to listen to what I am saying to her, so I talk to her all day long.  Its nice because I can pretty much talk to myself all the time and no one thinks I'm crazy ;)  She loves to give me great big smiles and laughs at me a lot.  She will sit there and clap at everything I do.  It is like having my own personal fan club following me around all day.  She claps for herself as well, when she figures something out.  It is so cute!  She is so much fun, but also very intense.  She is definitely my most difficult baby.  She is very moody and hard to distract.  She is determined to get exactly what she wants!  

She is still pretty shy with other adults, but she has finally warmed up to Dave.  That has been a huge relief!  She finally has realized that daddy is a lot of fun and wants him to carry her around and play with her.  She cries when he leaves the room now.  

She loves other babies and little kids.  When she sees them she starts clapping and squealing and tries to get their attention.  At church there are lots of babies and sometimes she tries to yell across the chapel to her friends.  One friend in particular is also very chatty and will start squealing back.  It is fun to see their little friendship blossoming!


I don't know her most recent stats, but we have an appointment on Friday so I will add that in then.
We mostly call her Evy, but she has many nicknames.  I occasionally do call her by her full name, Everly, but often I call her Ev, Ever or Evers.  We also call her baby, cutey baby,  or tooty baby.  My grandmother goes by her nickname, Tudie, and now I can see where that must have come from.  For some reason Tooty baby is a natural term of endearment for me to use on Evy. 
Sometimes I do get confused and start to call her Ady, but I correct it right away and end up saying Avy.  I try hard not to mix up their names, but it just happens sometimes.

She knows her name and looks at me when I call to her.  She definitely know who mommy and daddy are and will look at the right person when you say it.  She mostly knows who the older kids are by name as well. 


 We sure love this little girl!  Every day I look at her and I am in awe.  I feel so lucky to have her in our family and to be her mother.  Even though things can be hard and she is very challenging, I would not want it any other way.  I feel so blessed to have her to love and to be loved by her. ♥

9.12.2011

Striped Skirt

Over the Summer we were given a sack of hand-me-down clothes for Ady from a cousin.  Ady and I went through them and decided what to keep.  Ady doesn't like tank tops so she decided not to keep the one that was there, but I like the stripes in it so I decided to use the fabric for something else.  It is a nice stretch jersey fabric and was still in good condition so I didn't want to throw it away.  At first I thought I would take it in a bit and make a dress for Evy, but I decided that the way the straps were would be complicated to take in without looking strange.  I forgot to take a before picture, but here is a picture of what is left.  You can get the idea of what it was.
I started by cutting off the top part.  I cut it straight across.  Then I turned it under and sewed a casing for elastic.  I measured the waist of one of Evy's skirts and cut my elastic to that size, then fed it through the casing and sewed it closed.  


I had one long strip of fabric left so I cut it in half to make two flowers.  To make the flowers I sewed a loose stitch all the way across, then pulled it to make a ruffle on one side, then twirled it around into a rosette.  I sewed one onto the skirt and then decided to make another to sew onto a T-shirt.  I decided to make it into a pin rather than sew it on so the T-shirt can still be used under dresses. 

Here is the finished outfit.

I think it turned out so cute!  

It started out as a girl's size 7/8 tank top and is now a 6-12 month size skirt.
Since the tank top was a hand me down, the total cost for the project was basically free!  I had the shirt already, and it can still be used for other outfits.

Here is Evy modeling her new clothes :)


She isn't standing independently yet, so it was hard to get a good shot of her in the outfit.  She loves to stand hanging onto furniture though, so I tried some different poses.



This project was so easy!  I will definitely be on the lookout for other T-shirts and Tank tops to make into skirts for Ady and Evy.





DIY under $5

9.03.2011

2 little dresses

A few weeks ago Ady and I were thrift store hoping and came across a really cute women's skirt, but not in my size.  It had a nice wide waistband and I thought it might make a cute dress for Ady.  We also found a similar skirt in my size, so we bought them.  Now I am not much of a seamstress.  I can only do basics, but I am learning.  When I got home and took a better look at the skirt I bought to make into a dress, I realized that it wasn't going to be as easy as I had originally thought.  The pleating on it isn't uniform so it will be more complex to take in.  I will work on that one next. The skirt I bought for me was cute, but not extremely flattering, so I decided to use it for the project instead, since it was constructed the way I needed it to be for the dress.  

I forgot to take a picture of it before I started, but this is basically what it looked like, except I have already cut off the excess fabric.  First I had Ady try it on and we held it up to were she would wear it.  The skirt had a side zipper that I wanedt to utilize for the dress, so I kept that side intact.  I pinned it on the opposite side to were it would be in order to fit around Ady's chest.  I was worried that I might not leave enough for the seam allowance, so I ended up being a little too cautious and left a bit too much room.  She will be able to grow into it this way.  With the excess fabric I made straps and then the remainder was used to make a matching dress for Evy.




It needed a little something, so I pulled out some hot pink ribbon and sewed in onto the waistband.

There are definitely flaws, but overall I am so pleased with how it turned out.  There is no way I could have made a dress as complicated as this if I had started from scratch.  I will definitely be on the lookout for similar styled skirts at the thrift store to do this again.




I was hoping that there would be enough of the whole skirt left to make an identical dress for Evy, but it was a bit too narrow.  Fortunately the skirt was full enough that there was still lots of fabric available to use though.  I ended up going with a pillowcase style dress, loosely following this tutorial at Naptime Crafts.





Its a little big right now, so it should fit her for a while.  She wasn't very cooperative with trying it on over and over as I made it, so I had to do a lot of guessing.  Also, I was mostly working on it while she was asleep!

Isn't she cute?!




Here they are together :)

The total cost of the Project:
$4 for the skirt, I had the ribbon on hand, but It was probably about $2 worth.  
I did have to buy pink thread, so that was another $2.
So about $6 for 2 sweet little dresses!  Not bad!





I have always had a dream of making cute matching dresses for my two sweet little girls.  ♥ 






DIY under $5

8.30.2011

Our Family Photo Shoot





In July we had our first family photo shoot as a family of 6.  A friend of mine, Brooke,  has recently started her own photography business, so I hired her to take them.  It was so fun to catch up with an old friend and to have our pictures taken.  She did a fantastic job!  She spent so much time with us and tried to meet all my crazy demands.  She was so flexible and easy to work with too.  Thank you so much Brooke!  




I was really hoping for an orchard setting, so Brooke suggested Apple Works which is close to where I grew up.  It was a bit of a drive for us, but it was fun to be back in my hometown and see how things have changed.  
 



 
It ended up being a super hot day unfortunately, so Evy was pretty grumpy.  



In the past, our family has usually done pictures in the fall, so I wanted to change things up a bit.  I didn't really think about how incredibly hot it would be though!   We were pretty sweaty by the end of the day.

I felt bad that I dragged everyone out on such a sticky hot day so we ended up abandoning the orchard backdrop for some shade.  



Apple Works has some lovely gardens and sitting areas that are shady and worked out nicely for our pictures.





Kyler













Tayden





 







Ady 











Evy


All in all I am really pleased with how the day turned out.  We had a lot of fun and have some wonderful pictures to put up.  Thank you so much, Brooke, for humoring me :)



8.29.2011

More of the Photo Shoot

Here are some more of the pictures from our photo shoot in July with  Brooke.



I ♥ this one so much!  I love how it really captures a moment.


Here are some fun ones of the older kids.  I love Ady giving some sass!


 The sun was coming through the gazebo roof in a fun pattern.  The kids thought it looked like a jail cell, so we went with it.


Here are some sweet ones of Dave with Ady and of me with the boys.





We did some really fun pictures of Dave with the boys and of me with the girls too.





A few more of the kids















I love how these turned out of Dave and I






Thanks again Brooke!  We had so much fun and I love, love, love how they all turned out!  ♥♥♥