A 'little' batting a 'little' applique pillow

Homemade gift ~
I am starting to feel more and more confident sitting behind my sewing machine. Self learning comes with soooo many mistakes I feel, especially me who doesn't like to read directions. lol. I have started to realize however, that I am the creator of my creations.  One of my newer goals in sewing is to be willing to explore doing things in ways that I don't normally see.  I figure no inventor ever invented anything without risk and doing things differntly. So I will experiment as I go because I have noone to tell me 'no thats not the way you do it'. ;)

Here in Turkey there is not 100% cotton batting and I like it so much more than anything else. Batting is the stuff you put on the back of a quilt that actually makes it a quilt and gives it that puffy, cozy look. (fyi because I didn't know that one year ago. );) My friend gave me some of her small stash of batting this last Christmas, for me to quilt my first pillows. (here and here) Well now I have very little pieces of that batting left and I used a bit to make this small applique house on this pillow.  I made it for my firend who just moved into a new place..it was a house warming gift I guess. :)

I really like the way it looks frayed but I think next time I could do better.
The word : 'EVIM'  means 'My home' in Turkish

     I hand stitched this little quilted house, I just followed the pattern on the fabric.

Truth is I have no idea what I am doing and I am learning while I go.

The word Evim was hand stiched with a thicker thread.

Sewing the pillow this way with the mouth of the pillow open was much easier for me and quicker so I decided to do it the way I wanted and I like the way it turned out.

A sweet gift of fabric. 

I loved getting this fabric from our friends. I had a riot going through it all and there are some pieces that are just perfect for me!!! I am sosoo grateful for this sweet gift that weighed a lot for luggage allowance.

Ever since we had some friends come from the States and bring over all these bundels of fabric (most 100% cotton) I have had more inspiration to sew.  All the patterns are not my personal choice however what I like about not getting everything at my fingertips is that I get to become a more a diverse sewer (that is my hope anyway)and learn to experiment and put colors and such together that maybe I normally wouldn't.  I figure if I can learn to 'use what I have' regarding my fabric and not wait until I have everything that I want then I will be more versitle and when I do have more choices I won't waste them. :) 

Well that is all for now. Thanks for following me on this 'use what you have' journey. 

over here in the west corner ~Becky

For those of you newly visiting "Use what you have" is my theme for this season. I would love to have you follow/subcribe to this blog if  you too are at a place where you would like to thrive at 'using what you have'  instead of being discontent with what you don't have.  If you are simliar in this then please conisder joining me. Hopefully we can inspire eachother.

~~~

Silly Snack Saturday Extravaganza ~ Watermelon House

Welcome, today is the last Saturday in May and so the last of our Silly Snack Saturdays posts.  This week we have a special edition..for us it will be a go down in playing with food fun history edition. :)

Thank you all for following these silly fun inexpensive posts we have done this month.  I would love to know if you all liked these post and would like to see more in the future. Just drop a comment or hit a reaction button if you are hungry to see more of our food creations. :)

Unto the watermelon...We bought a watermelon for Sanck the other day and decided to clean out the inside , invert it and design away. Enjoy your Saturday..and eat some watermelon. ;)

This fabulous house comes with a tea gind and banana peal walkway a custon roof made out of toothpicks, strawberries and marshmellows.
The garden is full of marshmellow flowers and it comes complets with a tea bag shade already on the window.  ~made by little hands 

What is this you may ask...I have no idea. :) A fruit garden possibly. :) :)

Banana peals, wet tea grinds and a watermelon rind help to create this piece of modern food art.

~made by a differnt pair of little hands. :)

Well there you have it our Silly Snack extravagana.

Hope it gave you a smile and inspired creativity in some crazy way. :)

See you on Monday.

(*remember click or comment if you would like to see more of these creations in the future.  It is good to hear from you to know your interests.;)) If you like what you see and are not already following, come on along and join us. We would love to have you.

Scrap bracelets or diy bracelts

Hi there. Grabbing a cup of tea..

After this post and cutting up all the girls pants. I had (still have) a stash of left over fabric scraps.  So my oldest daughter and I went to work to see what we could create. 

We came up with some fun bracelts.

We used the scraps from the cotton pants but t-shirts would work great.
We mixed in one piece of ribbon for both of the bracelts we made.

This is a great way to help teach your daughter how to braid.:) Autty had a good time
  (frustrated on occasions) learning to braid with three pieces.

After the three pieces are braided together we then took a small piece of elastic and looped it through the braided part and then I simply hand stitched the elastic piece together.  I also snipped the endings of the ribbon and fabric so they were even.

Here is the finished product. :)
 Made by Autty and modeled by Autty.
We did these quite some time ago but I just haven't posted them (if you only knew how many back posts I have) :) and then just today I saw someone else online with this same idea except the bracelt was targeted for women. So hey I bet there is several variations to this idea (of course).

I think we are going to make a few more of these and send them as little gifts to some friends in the States. Hey, it's the little things that count, right.:)

Well our dear American friends that live here with us in this 'west corner' are going to be going to the States for part of this summer and I want to send some homemade gifts with them for my sisters and mom.  How in the world I am going to fit it in when they leave in 10 days and my daughter has a 5 year old b-day party and I wanted to make her a skirt, I do not know??? But I will give it a try. I'll let you know what I've been up to.

Grateful for the wild poppies and the spring breeze ~becky

Keep in touch I enjoy hearing from you.

Oh Yeah Our May Silly Snack Saturdays our ending and this Saturday is our last one and let me tell ya it is quite the extravaganza snack. :) Can't wait to see what you all think.

Twirl away darlings ~ your covered!

I have two girlies and they are just that girly.
They love to wear skirts and my younger of the two especially likes the twirly skirts and loves to twirl. She is pretty insistent on skirts every day, all day. :)

So as we know after Spring comes Summer, I considered buying some strtechy shorts for under their skirts and dresses for all that twirlying and sliding down slides etc. they will be doing. 

I have always wanted to make sure they are covered and still able to play without restriction. 

So I decided I would Spring clean and see what I could find.

'Use what you have' is my theme so instead of putting on my shopping list 'shorts for under skirts',  I opened the girls dresser and these were my finds. Perfect for my idea:

So here is what I did to ensure that my girls could

twirl, whirl, jump rope, slide down slides and still be modest and covered. ;)

 Here's the

QUICK PIC.TUT

Some shorts can be pretty uncomforable under skirts so I wanted to find the stretchy kind that would feel more natural for them.  I think these will work great and not be to bulky.

RE-USEING TIGHTS
 Since the girls have lots of tights from the winter and several with holes I went to work on those too.  I figure  in summer they my be too hot but until then I can get a little more use out of them.  I think they are pretty cute and my middle girly really likes them especially with the ruffle.

One thing I realized and then had to redo is to strech the tigths out and then meaure the ribbon.
While I sewed I continued to make sure the leg was streched well and then I sewed on the ribbon. I needed to ensure that the tights would fit around their thighs.
I hand stitched the tights. Truth is I just don't mind hand stiching ~ I think it can be theraputic sometimes. :)

Ok, ready for my darlings to twirl away.

 So that's that.  The thing I like about this idea so much is not that I turned pants into shorts

 ( so not an original idea) but that I was able to find a solution for a need

without immediatly going out and just buying something.
~becky

This was featured over at Measured by the Heart.

'cheeky chores'

Sometimes in order to get the desired results you just have to mix it up a bit. 

Usually every Monday is work day (chore day) at our house. I am usually eye deep in laundery (because Monday is my laundry day) and picking up from the weekend, so it has become a family affair.  In order to get more done and lighten the whiney tones; I on occasion write a bunch of 'real chores' on pieces of paper and put them in a bowl, then I wite a bunch of 'cheeky chores' and put those into the bowl and mix it up.  The kids draw out a piece of paper and do what it says, throw away the piece and grab another.  They love the fun interuptions when they pull out a 'cheeky chore', coming and hugging Mom or stopping to get to eat a cookie, helps them keep going with good attitudes. :) Truth is I like a few 'cheeky chores' in my day too!

Usually I have a bowl for each girl but this past Monday I tried something new and put all the chores in one bowl and then used the blue bowl for paid chores.  When they were done with their regular chores if they wanted to earn money they could pick from the blue bowl and get paid for doing those chores.  If you are wondering, yes one of my girlies came back and picked a paid chore. I was proud of her.

Here are a few 'real chores' and a few 'cheeky chores'

This last Monday the kids came to me and asked if I
would do the 'bowl thing' this week for chores. :)

Here is another way I do it sometimes if I have a reason
for them getting things done in a certain order. they start with 1 and work their way down to 5.

I actually read this idea or something like it in a magazine years ago and I remembered it one 'dirty house, whiny kid' day and we have been doing chores this way on and off for over a year.

This is NOT a perfect solution and I try to do 'work day' on Mondays becasue I am usaully doing laundry or some other chore that can be easily interuppted if the kids need me (and usaully the younger ones do.) :)

"Cheeky Chore" ideas:

Pick a song (we always do 'work day' with music.)

Hug Mommy

Eat a small treat

Jump rope 10 times

Kiss/hug siblings

Call Daddy and say I love you (could be any relative)

Hope this is helpful. I would love to know if it is.

Please hit the 'helpful' reaction at the bottom if this brings any inspiration to you.:)

If you do something that has been succesful for chores I would love to know because

as my kids grow new and differnt ideas are helpful. ~

Happy Monday to you all. Thank you for following along, I love having you. ~becky

Silly Snack Saturday ~Olive eyes

Silly Snack Saturday.

We have guests this weekend and we made robots/aliens out of tp rolls and tin foil (which I will post soon for you to see all the crafty, pretend fun) and so it only seemed appropriate to try a cucumber alien/robot for our silly snack.

Here is Olive Eyes ~
Our veggie Alien/Robot :)

                                Here is one of our littlest guests this weekend eating her Olive Eyes. :)

To Make your own Olive Eyes:
Cucumber
Green olive
Red pepper (for the feet)
Carrot
Tooth picks

Have a great weekend and see you on Monday. :)

Thanks for following along.  I love your comments and care.

Also you are welcome to sign up by e-mail and get the posts that way, if it is easier for you.

~becky

Investing in the neighborhood school #2

In April I prepared a fun project for

Autty's 1st grade class about Art.

(I am a little behind in some of my posting:) so this one is a month old)

I displayed 3 differnt types of art :

 Pointallism,  Brush Stroke and Cube art.

I then told the kids that today we were goign to be artist and we attemped to do pointillism painting with q-tips.

The kids really enjoyed it and took there time to make sure their pictures were full of dots.



Here I am explaining what we are about to do. :)
This dot to dot q-tip painting is an inexpensive craft for kids and teaches them to take their time and learn a new techinque.
This is a good group craft I think.

~ becky

Check out this link to see more dot to dot art by my daughter.:)

Also George Seurat is a famous pointillism painter, who developed the technique. His famous painting Sunday Afternoon On the Island of La Grands Jatte took him 2 years to paint and is comprised of millions of dots to form the picute. It is spectacular.

Sharpies and a shirt

My Little Lydia woke up two mornings ago and asked if she could color on her undershirt (that she was wearing as pjs) with permenatnt marker.  I told her maybe when she got home from school we could talk about it. Well when she got home from school she was talking about it. :)
I figure no harm in letting her be a fashion designer on an old under shirt with some supervision so away she went and then of course the older sister went and found something in the pj drawer and away she went designing away.

Colorful sharpies can't be found here however someone gave me this great colorful pack of sharpies!!! I love them. ( However I have found colorful permanant markers here at most of the kirtasiyes for any of you Turkey dwellers wanting to let their kids scribble some art on their clothing.
Like on this post :))

   I figure in time to the color will fade but I think that will matter very little to this happy little girl. I believe if you iron the marker after about 12 hours it keeps the color longer (fyi). Sometimes it is easier to say 'no' when my kids come and ask something of me, like coloring all over their shirt :). I really am trying to make a habit of thinking about their request before being so quick to say no. Really I think my yes's should be more than my no's. As a mommy if you can relate to me in this hit helpful in the reactions. :) So say yes and scribble away on a shirt today. lol (I am such a geek)

Much care to each of you.  Thank you for dropping by my little west corner ~becky

Recyclable Treats for our 'sweet shop'

I had one of those moments again where inspiration hit with a fun idea for the girlies. 

So come along and see how sweet an egg carton, bottle caps and a cardboard box can really be, at our Sweet Treats Shop. Pretty tasty!!

From this:

and this:

To this:

and this:

 Come to the Sweet Treat Shop right down the hallway

 for some great homemade (recyclable) treats.

The other picture above was staged but this one wasn't. I thought it was so cute her sitting there waiting for one of us to come by. :) 

Afiyet Olusn!!

 Picture Tutorial 

~ egg carton fabric cupcakes:

Cut up egg carton and paint individual cups.

Decorate with beads and ribbon ~my girls favorite part~ and there you have it, recyclable Treats.

For our tea:

The cardboard box for the Sweet Treats Shop window came from our makeshift theater in this post if you all remember.  Sometimes I get these ideas in my head and they get bigger and bigger :). This one wasn't too big but it did take time and I wanted to do most of it 'with' the girls and that takes more time, so on the opening day :) of the Sweet Treats Shop not to much house work got done and Isaac spent a lot of the evening with his Baba in order for us girlies to have a 'sweet' time. :)

Being creative with my girls is fun and challenging. I often have the beginning idea and then they continue the idea with this and thats along the way. One challenging thing is 'letting' them create and not try and make them do it my way, the "better" way.  Perfection is not the goal it is allowing them to come up with their own ideas and use their God given imagination and creativity to explore and dream up fun things on their own.  ~ Always learning.

from my west corner over here

~becky